Month: March 2023

Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

Sweden is now looking to follow in the footsteps of Denmark, which has enticed hundreds of migrants home with financial incentives…

Once seen as the most accepting country in the world for refugees, the right-wing Swedish government, elected on a promise to curb immigration, is now enacting reforms to encourage migrants to return to their country of origin.

To accomplish this, the government in Stockholm, together with the Swedish Democrats who support the coalition but are not formally part of the government, is increasing the financial support migrants can receive if they return home voluntarily.

“We are targeting the large number of groups that arrived in the past decades and failed to integrate,” said the migration minister of the Moderate Party, Maria Malmer, to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

Malmer said that they will make sure that everyone who wants support to leave Sweden permanently will get the financial means to make this possible.

In the Scandinavian country, it was already possible for migrants to apply for repatriation support if they decided to return to their home country. However, the program was not popular. In the last 10 years, a total of only 46 immigrants asked the immigration office for money to return to their country of origin, and eight of them have since returned to Sweden. 

Currently, a family with a residence permit and protection status who wants to return to their country, if all conditions are met, can receive a “travel” grant of up to 40,000 Swedish kronor (€3,500). The government is now looking to substantially increase this amount to encourage more migrants to sign up.

The plan came about after the Swedish immigration office was given the task of analyzing how to get more people to voluntarily move back to their home country. Sweden’s plan is not unique, as Denmark, known for its restrictive approach to immigration, is already applying the model — so far with more success. In the last 10 years, 300 to 500 migrants have left Denmark every year, receiving a significant amount of financial support for this purpose.

The question now is whether increased financial incentives will encourage more migrants to leave Sweden. A substantial challenge may be due to the fact that Sweden offers extraordinarily generous benefits to migrants, even those subject to deportation orders, which decreases the incentive to leave the country.

Stockholm’s new government is, nevertheless, attempting to follow the example of the Visegrád countries and Austria: and the government is signaling it wants to pursue a policy designed to curb immigration.

As Remix News has previously reported, Swedes have conducted a sharp U-turn on the question of immigration in recent years due to soaring crime, cultural clashes, and fears over changing demographics.

Authored by Connor Freeman via The Libertarian Institute, 

Washington and NATO have rapidly escalated their war with Russia. The White House appears to have blown up the Nord Stream pipelines in a blatant act of war against Russia, not to mention Germany and other European allies.The CIA is reportedly conducting sabotage attacks on Russian infrastructure and the Pentagon has tacitly endorsed Kiev’s drone strikes hundreds of miles deep inside the Russian mainland.

Along with an assortment of NATO commandos, U.S. troops, CIA, and Special Operations forces are on the ground in Ukraine as well. The White House has greenlit the transfer of Bradley armored fighting vehicles, longer range rockets, and M1 Abrams battle tanks to the battlefield.

Kiev is demanding hundreds of tanks. Concurrently, multiple European NATO members are sending their own main battle tanks to Ukraine, and a U.S. backed assault on Crimea is expected soon. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky goads London, Berlin, and Paris into handing over fighter jets, his country has already suffered more than 100,000 casualties, hundreds of Ukrainian troops are dying every day just over a battle for the eastern Donetsk city of Bakhmut.

In recent months, officials in Kiev have explicitly stated that Ukraine—a “de facto” NATO member—is “shedding blood” for a “NATO mission.” The goal is eliminating Moscow as a “threat” to the alliance by weakening, destabilizing, and disintegrating Russia.

In the process, Ukraine, the human battering ram, is being destroyed. But in the words of Madeline Albright, from the Empire’s perspective, “the price is worth it.”

Russia must be crippled before the Pentagon launches its impending war against China, “the big one,” which top military commanders and four star generals now warn will take place in only a few years.

In the meantime, experts and analysts continue to point out—along with even The New York Times—that we are systematically pushing “the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia.”

What is the justification for this seemingly perpetual escalation? The U.S. war machine reasons that since Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet ordered strikes on NATO territory or pushed the nuclear button, Washington and its NATO vassals can freely provide Kiev with increasingly advanced weapons and even support assaults against the Crimean Peninsula as well as the Russian homeland itself.

The aforementioned tanks will likely be used for the potential attacks on Crimea (read: Russian territory) currently being considered by the White House. Such an escalation could swiftly lead to World War III and a nuclear exchange.

Incidentally, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warns nuclear war is now a more likely possibility than at any time during the Cold War. In making their case for turning the clock to 90 seconds to midnight—for the first time—the group partly refers to the refusal of the United States, Ukraine, and its allies to come to the negotiating table.

BAS president and CEO Rachel Bronson said in a statement following the decision that the “U.S. government, its NATO allies and Ukraine have a multitude of channels for dialogue; we urge leaders to explore all of them to their fullest ability to turn back the clock.”

Last fall, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was advocating a negotiated settlement between Kiev and Moscow. However, he was all but vetoed by the so-called diplomats in Antony Blinken’s State Department.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recently discussed how he attempted to mediate a peace deal with Russia and Ukraine in early March 2022. According to Bennett, both sides made major concessions and “there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire.”  He has now revealed the effort was overruled and ultimately “blocked” by President Joe Biden and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

According to current and former U.S. officials, that same month, Turkish brokered talks in Istanbul between the warring sides also established a workable foundation for a future settlement. The whole enterprise was squashed again by Johnson, acting on behalf of the “collective West.”

Even when U.S. military leadership expresses uneasiness about the war’s trajectory, the provision of heavy western-made tanks, or the sheer inability of Ukrainian forces to regain all the territory Russia has captured, the escalations continue anyway. The hawkish Secretary General of NATO himself has said “I fear that the war in Ukraine will get out of control, and spread into a major war between NATO and Russia.”

Likewise, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned “I fear the world is not sleepwalking into a wider war. I fear it is doing so with its eyes wide open.” The American people must draw red lines now and stop their out of control ruling class waging wars against nuclear armed powers. As Roger Waters says, this is not a drill.

Our fellow countrymen have become dangerously desensitized to the thought of direct conflict with both Russia and China.

Tragically, our people have been numb for a long time. They have yet to truly reckon with our government’s mass murder marathon of the last 20 years including one million dead Iraqis, half a million dead Syrians, as well as the hundreds of thousands killed in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.

Designedly, our enemies in Washington need us to be numb to the inevitable results of their reckless, murderous policies. The hawks will next try the same proxy war strategy in Taiwan, we will not get another chance to draw red lines.

We must demand all military aid be terminated, and that the White House and the State Department be forced to support or at least not interfere with negotiations.

We must demand an immediate end to this war now.

A Pennsylvania man has been arrested after Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inspectors found a live explosive device hidden in a bag he checked for a flight from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley International Airport to Orlando Sanford International on Monday.  

Marc Muffley, a 40-year-old resident of Lansford, Pennsylvania, has been charged with possessing an explosive in an airport and possessing or attempting to place an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft.  

In a criminal complaint, the FBI says Muffley’s bag was flagged by an alarm after he checked it at the Allegiant Air counter. Officials examined the bag and found a “circular compound, approximately three inches in diameter, wrapped in wax-like paper and clear plastic wrap hidden in the lining of the baggage.”

When an FBI bomb technician X-rayed the compound, he concluded it contained a “granular type of powder consistent with a commercial grade firework. This granular powder is suspected to be a mixture of flash powder and the dark granulars that are used in commercial grade fireworks.”

Two fuses were attached to the compound: a “quick fuse” that appeared to “part of the original manufacture,” and a slower-burning “hobby fuse” that appeared to be added later. The agent submitting the criminal complaint said the powders “are susceptible to ignite from heat and friction and posed a significant risk to the aircraft and passengers.” 

The FBI says Muffley’s bag also contained a can of butane, a lighter, a pipe with white powder residue, a wireless drill with cordless batteries, and two GFCI outlets taped together with black tape. Upon discovery, the “immediate area” of the airport was evacuated, the TSA said. 

According to the complaint, airport security cameras captured Muffley being dropped off at the airport on Monday morning. While the name of the car’s owner was redacted, that person’s driver’s license has the same address as Muffley, about 40 miles northwest of the Lehigh Valley airport in Allentown. 

When TSA officials found the explosive compound, they paged Muffley over the airport public address system, directing him to report to the security desk. Five minutes later, cameras captured him leaving the airport.

Muffley was arrested at his home about 12 hours later, at 11:30 Monday night. On Thursday, he admitted to packing the materials, but his lawyer suggested he intended to shoot fireworks on a Florida beach, near where his ill grandfather lives. 

“No one has posited one conceivable theory on how this thing could have gone off. That was not going to happen inside of a bag,” said his attorney, Jonathan McDonald. The judge ordered him held without bail. 

The Daily Mail, linking to Muffley’s rap sheet, reports that he has faced a variety of charges dating to 2017, including drug charges, harassment, “disorderly conduct engage in fighting,” and driving an unregistered vehicle. Citing the Hazleton Standard-Speaker, CNN reports that he was also arrested for stealing $22 worth of batteries from a Family Dollar store. 

Discussing the criminal history with CNN, former Lansford police chief Jack Soberick said his many encounters with Muffley were minor in nature: “There’s nothing that would light up and say, ‘Hey, this guy’s gonna try to bomb an aircraft’. I don’t think he’s radicalized or anything like that.”

This explosive compound was initially discovered by a machine. In 2015, an internal TSA investigation found that manned checkpoints had a 95% failure rate in discovering mock explosives and weapons being smuggled by undercover agents testing the system. 

Authored by Marie Hawthorne via The Organic Prepper blog,

Preppers get called conspiracy theorists a lot.  It’s supposed to be demeaning, but considering how many conspiracy theories have been proven correct lately, I no longer consider it an insult.  The more time goes by, the more “conspiracy theorists” just seem ahead of the game.

Quite a few “conspiracy theories” have recently come to light as actual facts in 2023 already. And it’s only the beginning of March.

Let’s look at a recent batch of “conspiracy theories” that aren’t really theories any more.  

Gas stoves in peril?

In January, the OP ran a story about the potential ban on gas stoves.  Naturally, the mainstream media poo-poohed the idea that the government would do something like that.  The New York Times insisted that “No, Biden is Not Trying to Ban Gas Stoves.”   CNN likewise claimed Biden didn’t want to ban the stoves  NPR dismissed the thought of banning gas stoves as a right-wing, culture war stunt.

Well, maybe they’re not going to outright ban gas stoves. . . but the Department of Energy is proposing new efficiency standards that will make approximately half the gas stoves on the market no longer available. So, technically this isn’t a ban, but regulating gas stoves out of existence has the exact same effect.   

This is particularly problematic for anyone with fairly new models.  Newer appliances are made to break down within about ten years.  Anyone who’s been a homeowner for more than a decade knows this.  If appliances are made to only last ten years or so, the government doesn’t need to conduct some dramatic midnight raid to steal your stove.  All they have to do is wait.  Within ten years, most people will have to replace their stoves anyway, and at that point, very few, if any, gas stoves will still be on the market.  

Nope, it’s not just a theory.  They really do want to get rid of gas stoves.

Covid origins?

And in other Department of Energy news, the agency recently came to the conclusion that Covid probably did come from a lab.  The findings were part of a classified report, which the government agency shared with the Wall Street Journal last weekend.

Back in 2021, the FBI had been the only federal agency to state with “moderate confidence” that Covid came from a lab.  At the time, their finding mostly went ignored.  However, with another agency admitting it, and WSJ covering the story, it becomes more difficult to brush aside.

And at least we’re allowed to openly discuss the lab leak now.  Two years ago, we weren’t.  In February 2021, Facebook banned any discussion of the possible laboratory origins of Covid.  The lab leak theory was just too crazy to even consider. Zero Hedge was banished from Twitter for daring to suggest the makeup of the virus was peculiar in 2020. The Organic Prepper was called a disinformation site and defunded due, in part, to our coverage of the virus.

But now, House Republicans are launching an investigation into the origins of Covid.   And once the Wall Street Journal publishes something, even the stodgiest Boomers can’t ignore it.  

The Covid lab leak theory is slowly but surely looking less like a theory, and more like an established fact.

The Covid vaccine?

This is hardly the only situation in which Covid dissidents have been proven correct.  There has been a small contingent of people from the beginning who were reluctant to participate in the trial of a novel medical product.  Considering the many criminal payouts Big Pharma has had to make over the years, wanting long-term studies before trying a novel pharmaceutical product shouldn’t be controversial.    

The cost (injecting a poorly-tested novel substance) did not match up with the benefit (avoiding a not-particularly dangerous disease that many of us had a natural immunity to anyway).  Plenty of well-informed people had perfectly rational reasons for vaccine hesitancy.

Were our concerns taken seriously?  No.  The Othering was vicious and relentless.  Daisy wrote an article about it here.  Family relationships were stressed and sometimes broken. Careers were ended. Opportunities were denied. Reputations were ruined.  

And meanwhile, the “safe and effective” drumbeat resounded.  Anyone who wanted real answers about what was happening, who wanted to wait for long-term studies, was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.

So, who was right?  Were the shots safe and effective?  Or were the conspiracy theorists the reasonable ones?

I’m not a doctor or statistician.  All I can do is point at actual numbers.  And even the most pro-vax publications cannot hide the non-Covid excess mortality of the past two years. Young, formerly healthy people have been dying at far higher rates than they used to, and it’s not from Covid.  As of right now, no one can prove that jabs are responsible, because no one wants to look that closely.  But we can’t prove they’re not responsible, either.  Safe?  I’m not convinced, and neither are a lot of vastly more qualified people.  Just look at Ed Dowd’s meticulously researched book, Cause Uknown.

And even Tony “The Science” Fauci recently admitted that the shots don’t really work at preventing transmission or infection.  So, nope, these jabs aren’t effective either.  

Meanwhile, Congress is finally launching an investigation into the safety of the forced vaccine.

Were the conspiracy theorists right to be cautious about the new shots?  Yeah, I think so.  

Mandatory masking?

And what about the masks?  We got mixed signals about masks from the beginning.  In March 2020, Dr. Fauci said they didn’t work, then he later changed his tune.  Many people around the country had to deal with mask mandates for over a year.

Well, the experts at the Cochrane Library recently published a huge meta-analysis of the effectiveness of physical barriers (like masks) at preventing respiratory viruses (like Covid).  They can’t find any strong links between masking and disease prevention.  Cochrane studies are the gold standard.  They’re very conservative, they rarely make hard and fast statements, but once they do, people typically stop arguing.  

The mask debate is one that really smacks us at the OP because, back in 2021, NewsGuard cited our questioning of the mask narrative as a reason to downgrade us, which really hurt our income stream.  Daisy goes into the whole story here. She cited studies with a variety of outcomes regarding masks, and NewsGuard saw the variety of viewpoints as reason enough to downgrade us.

The journalism majors working at NewsGuard don’t seem to understand that letting multiple educated people argue is more true to the scientific ideal than top-down authoritarian mandates.  

I’m not the only person saying this.  Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor and MD, said as much in a recent interview with Jordan Peterson. At 5:26, he talks about public perception during the pandemic:

There was this sort of uni-vocal conclusion that you had to do lockdowns, you had to wear masks, you had to socially distance, you had to put plastic barriers up, you had to close schools, you had to do all of these things; that the vaccines would stop transmission of the disease, that therefore it was warranted that people would lose their jobs over them.  All of these ideas were sold as if there was a scientific consensus in favor of them.  That was a lie.  There was never a scientific consensus on almost any of the topics; and as you say on masks, in fact, the preexisting narrative, the preexisting idea of most scientists before the pandemic, was in quite the opposite direction.

Dr. Bhattacharya’s not the only highly qualified doctor speaking out, either.  In fact, so many of the various Covid narratives have been proven wrong, that Dr. Marty Makary, chief of Islet Transplant Surgery at Johns Hopkins medical school, recently published an article February 27 titled “10 myths told by covid experts—and now debunked.”  

“Masks prevent transmission” is #2 on the list.  I guess if NewsGuard still thinks Daisy is a conspiracy theorist over this one, she’s got some pretty kick-ass company.

But in all seriousness, thank God (or whoever you pray to) for doctors like Dr. Bhattacharya and Dr. Makary for not treating the public like we’re mentally impaired rodents.  There are still a few true medical experts out there who genuinely want to educate the public, and give us real answers.  

The air and water in East Palestine?

In the meantime, I wonder if the EPA will find any real experts. That agency keeps insisting that the air and water in East Palestine are perfectly safe, despite the derailment and subsequent disaster going on a few weeks ago.  

The EPA says they’ve been testing for everything and that the numbers indicate everything looks good; professional chemists aren’t so sure.  “They should be testing for individual compounds, and if they are testing for total VOCs [volatile organic compounds] as a screen, they need to have very sensitive instruments because some VOCs are much more toxic than others,” says Ted Schettler, MD, and science director at the nonprofit Science and Environmental Health network.  The fact that East Palestine residents are still smelling off odors suggests that the EPA is not using sensitive enough equipment.

And the EPA hasn’t started testing for the myriad other substances that formed when the known chemicals in the train were burned.  When you mix chemicals together and burn them, new chemicals form, and this hasn’t even been talked about much yet.  

It’s probably going to be a long time before we have a good picture of the damage caused by this derailment.  But, what do we know?

We know that the people of East Palestine are still suffering from bizarre symptoms.  Rashes, shortness of breath, and a burning sensation while breathing are common.  Some people have had voice changes, loss of taste and smell, and random infections. Because East Palestine is such a low-income area, doctors can’t do the tests they need to, though they all agree that the citizens are in real pain.  

And yet EPA Administrator Michael Regan states, “Nothing is coming back that shows adverse health impacts.”  

Government officials are not helping themselves by insisting there’s “nothing to see here!”  Distrusting the federal government has traditionally been in the realm of conspiracy theorists, but once again, which group of people seems more reasonable?  

The Twitter files?

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering if I’m too cynical, too eager to see ill intent.

Then came the Twitter Files. 

We’ve written about them before on this site. When Elon Musk bought Twitter, he handed over internal documents to independent journalists Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Lee Feng to peruse.  

Many figures in alternative media had suspected they were being shadow-banned, or having a hard time reaching followers.  The Twitter Files confirmed everyone’s worst suspicions: the federal government does spend millions of dollars policing online content, and much of it targets law-abiding citizens with inconvenient opinions, rather than real criminals.  Many of the people that had their accounts locked or frozen weren’t even big media presences, just people with a few dozen followers with an annoying sense of humor, or who got snarky about the wrong things.   

Five years ago, anyone convinced the Feds were watching their every online move would have been labeled a crazy conspiracy theorist.  

Well, yet again, the conspiracy theorists have been proven correct.  

The gaslighting continues.

If you’ve ever been in an abusive relationship, you probably know what it’s like to have someone trying to convince you you’re crazy.  The only way to survive gaslighting like that is to constantly remind yourself of things you know are true.  That’s why it’s so important to keep track of whatever narratives we’re supposed to swallow and constantly check them against our preexisting knowledge base.  It’s important to hold purveyors of false narratives to account; it’s important to point to tangible facts and to be able to discuss them.

These are only the most recent examples of conspiracy theorists being proven correct.  Daisy had an article about “7 Things That Used to Be ‘Crazy Conspiracy Theories’ Until 2020 Happened.”  The tin foil hat wearers have been getting vindicated a lot in the past few years.  

I think we’re going to keep seeing more of this for a while.  Universal Basic Income, digital currencies, AI tech, there are so many new things happening right now. 

A map released on Thursday by US Drought Monitor shows that the convey belt of severe rain and winter storms for the last two months has significantly eased California’s extreme drought.

The Sierra Nevada region in north-central California, the coastline stretching from Monterey Bay to northwest Los Angeles County, and parts of northwest California, including Humboldt and Del Norte counties, are no longer classified as being in a state of drought.

The middle of the state is now labeled as “abnormally dry,” while northeast California and the high desert of southeastern California remain in “severe drought” and “moderate drought” classifications — but easing from extreme levels several months ago. 

On Jan. 12, the drought map showed that conditions in various regions had started to improve after a series of storms in the first two weeks of the month.

Here’s what the drought map looked like on Jan. 5. 

And on Dec. 9. 

Since the recent snowstorms, snowpack levels across the state have reportedly reached a 40-year high. 

There’s so much snow in Southern California that Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency. 

San Bernardino Co. Snow Response:

– 4 to 5 feet of additional snow overnight
-500 miles of mountain roads need plowing
-Over 96 responses to residents
-No serious injuries/deaths
-still waiting on additional resources after emergency declaration @FOXLAhttps://t.co/fYy07DbUgj pic.twitter.com/TgvOhZScxa

— Mario Ramirez (@MarioFOXLA) March 1, 2023

All the storms have been a boon for California’s reservoirs. The latest figures show 94% of major reservoir levels are at normal for this time of year. This is great news following last summer when reservoir levels were dangerously low. 

Here are stunning before and after photos of Lake Oroville, one of California’s largest reservoirs. 

And just like that, Mother Nature heals itself without any assistance from Democrats who tax the heck out of people in the name of ‘saving the planet.’ 

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

Speaking to the US House Armed Services Committee, Undersecretary of Defense Colin Kahl falsely testified that Iran could make enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb in “about 12 days.”

Kahl claims that Iran’s enrichment capacity has increased sufficiently over the course of the past five years — since the US abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka the “Iran nuclear deal” — to reduce that timeline from more like a year, and regrets that the JCPOA is “on ice.”

Kahl as the third ranking DOD official said in his testimony, “Because Iran’s nuclear progress since we left the JCPOA has been remarkable. Back in 2018, when the previous administration decided to leave the JCPOA it would have taken Iran about 12 months to produce one bomb’s worth of fissile material. Now it would take about 12 days.”

He continued: “And so I think there is still the view that if you could resolve this issue diplomatically and put constraints back on their nuclear program, it is better than the other options. But right now, the JCPOA is on ice.”

But other officials concede that Iran is not stockpiling any uranium enriched beyond 60%, well short of weapons grade, and also doubt Iran’s other technical capacities to build nuclear weapons.

Iran may produce fissile material for a bomb ‘in about 12 days’ – says US senior official @ColinKahl pic.twitter.com/5FyEvSpoEf

— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) February 28, 2023

Getting a bomb’s worth of 90% uranium is no small task, even before trying to make it into a deliverable weapon. Iran’s weapons development capabilities would be in doubt even if they were stockpiling uranium, which again they aren’t.

Pentagon officials still maintain that getting back into a deal with Iran is preferable to not having one.

A virtual event with Fed Governor Christopher Waller was canceled on Thursday after the Zoom videoconference was “hijacked” by a participant who displayed pornographic images that was visible to all viewers.

Waller had planned to deliver remarks (his prepared hawkish speech is here, a Reuters summary can be found here) on the economic outlook to the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America, which was hosting the event, but it was not meant to be.

“We were a victim of a teleconference or Zoom hijacking and we are trying to understand what we need to do going forward to prevent this from ever happening again. It is an incident we deeply regret,” said Brent Tjarks, executive director of the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America (MBCA), which hosted the event via a Zoom link. “We have had various programs and this is something that we have never had happen to us.”

Tjarks said that he suspects one of the security switches that mutes those watching an event was set incorrectly, but he was not yet sure of the details.

A few minutes before the event was to start, one participant using the screen name “Dan” began displaying graphic, pornographic images, according to a Reuters reporter on the call.

Microphones and video were not muted by the organizer upon joining, and more than 220 participants on the Zoom call at one point before it was terminated,

The decision to cancel was made in consultation with the Fed after the intrusion. After releasing Waller’s prepared remarks, the Fed said in a statement that “there are technical difficulties with Governor Waller’s virtual event and it has been canceled.”

The Fed said the event, which was to feature a speech by Waller as well as a question-and-answer session, was canceled due to “technical difficulties.”

Fed events are typically highly choreographed and security is usually tight.

Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A condom scavenger hunt is part of a new workbook being used in public schools.

The workbook, which has been discovered in both middle and high schools, is filled with hundreds of pages of sexual assignments.

Rhode Island English school teacher and parent Ramona Bessinger, who is also a national advocate against woke ideology in schools, told The Epoch Times that parents don’t know about the workbook or its assignments because it falls under the category of what schools call “consumables.”

“Consumables live on shelves in the classroom. Students do not take them home and once they complete an assignment, their teacher tears the worksheet out of the book, reviews it, grades it, and then throws it away,” explained Bessinger.

She believes consumables are deliberately designed to keep parents in the dark about assignments that would upset them.

Bessinger, who has appeared on national TV including the Tucker Carlson Show, is currently on suspension from her teaching position with the Providence schools for criticizing CRT teaching and sexually graphic material being used in the classroom.

The national watchdog group Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit over Bessinger’s suspension.

Parties are under a gag order in the controversy.

But says Bessinger, she can still talk as a parent and said even with all the shocking material she has seen, the assignment entitled “condom hunt” she says was especially stomach-turning.

Directions on the assignment, which is entitled “Condom Hunt,” instruct students to “research the availability of condoms from a local store or other resources.”

It goes on to tell students to complete the remainder of the worksheet by providing the names of the store they found condoms including giving its address and business hours.

It also asks students to list “what kinds of condoms” were sold at the stores they visited.

Unusual Scavenger Hunt

Then it asks students to answer about the unusual scavenger hunt. “How comfortable would you feel getting condoms here,” one question asks.

It then provides students with multiple choices to choose from ranging from very comfortable to very uncomfortable.

The final question on the assignment asks students if they would “recommend that a friend buy condoms here” and explain their answer.

The last part of the assignment is called “Self-Check” with two options to choose from.

One of the options states “I provide all the information about obtaining condoms.” The second states “I explained why I would or wouldn’t recommend this resource to a friend.”

Other assignments out of the workbook include one entitled “Harley and Drew” for which students are asked to answer questions about sexual encounters between two friends when one invites the other over to his house where he is babysitting his little brother.

Another is a group assignment involving a matching card game of sexual terms including several transgender and homosexual terms and expressions.

Unhappy Parents

“Schools are bastardizing childhood innocence with these assignments,” Nicole Solas, a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum told The Epoch Times.

Read more here…

The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC) – the so-called Two Sessions – will kick off this weekend (starting on Saturday, March 4 and Sunday, March 5, respectively). During the one-week long “Two Sessions” event, the Government Work Report delivered by outgoing Premier Li Keqiang and the 2023 fiscal budget proposed by the Ministry of Finance will be discussed and approved by the NPC. Because this year’s Two Sessions coincide with the once-in-a-decade personnel reshuffling at the State Council as well as all the ministries under the State Council, they carry special importance.

The TL/DR summary of what to expect, comes from Bloomberg’s in-house China expert Tom Orlik who writes that the Congress/Conference will see a further direct concentration of economic and financial power under the CCP:

While the assumption among many China watchers is that the changes represent a further tilt away from markets that is ultimately bad for growth, recent moves to end Covid Zero restrictions, boost support for the property sector and seek better ties with the US suggest that investors shouldn’t rush to conclusions. The potential positive way of looking at the looming personnel and organizational changes is when Xi has a team around him who he’s familiar with and who he trusts. Perhaps there’s just some more space to get some good things done, to make some pragmatic decisions.

For those less pressed for time, here is a more detailed summary on what to expect at the Two Sessions, as excerpted from a recent note by Goldman analyst Hui Shan

Three things to watch: growth target, fiscal budget, and personnel changes

On the first day of the NPC (Sunday, March 5), the sitting premier Li Keqiang will deliver his last Government Work Report (GWR) which will contain the government’s various economic targets, most important of which is the GDP growth target. Goldman’s baseline expectation is a relatively conservative “around 5%” GDP growth target, although the bank forecasts actual GDP growth to be 5.5% in 2023. Last year’s miss on growth target (3.0% actual growth vs. “around 5.5%” target) may cause policymakers to set a low bar to ensure success this year as evidenced by provincial governments’ conservative targets for 2023. Investors currently expect a growth target in the 5-5.5% range, and a significantly higher target (e.g., 6%) announced over the weekend could be market-moving.

The GWR will mention some fiscal plans such as official on-budget deficit (GS expects 3.2% vs. 2.8% last year) and local government special bond (LGSB) quota (GS expects RMB 4tn vs. RMB 3.65tn last year). However, the more comprehensive fiscal budget proposal is likely released later during the Two Sessions. The projected tax revenue growth may inform us about the government’s expectation on nominal GDP growth, the planned transfer from central to local governments may hint at policymakers’ concern on local governments’ fiscal conditions and their determination in controlling local government implicit debt, and the government-managed fund revenue (mostly land sales revenue) may give us clues on policymakers’ view on the property sector momentum.

During the Two Sessions, changes to Party and state organizations and reshuffling of State Council and ministerial personnel, which were planned at the Second Plenum during February 26-28, will be revealed to the public and approved by the NPC. It has been reported in the media that the financial regulatory authority may be moved to a resurrected Central Financial Work Commission (which was first established in 1998 in the aftermath of the Asia Financial Crisis and abolished in 2003) led by Ding Xuexiang, a Politburo Standing Committee member. The current Financial Stability and Development Committee under the State Council and led by Liu He may cease to exist. And He Lifeng, a Politburo member, may replace Guo Shuqing, a Central Committee member, to become the party secretary of the PBOC. If true, these changes indicate an elevated importance of, and more party control over, the financial regulatory system.

Beyond these three key parameters, statements on sector-specific policies can be important to investors as well. For example, characterization of the property market, consumption boosting measures, and internet regulations are worth monitoring. Such discussions may be provided in the GWR, press conferences with ministers in economic and financial areas, and/or in official news reports by Xinhua, People’s Daily and CCTV. Additionally, statements in the GWR regarding Taiwan may also gather market attention

Where we are in the post-Covid recovery

To gauge policy stance to be unveiled at or after the Two Sessions, one must first assess where China is in its post-Covid economic recovery. Based on GS tracking of high-frequency data, mobility measures such as the 100-city traffic congestion index have mostly normalized (Exhibit 2). Channel checks and anecdotal evidence suggest that high-end consumer markets have been recovering quickly. In the property market, the 30-city daily property sales data showed notable improvements in recent days (Exhibit 3). Similarly, the NBS 70-city property prices and the Beke’s 50-city existing home prices showed increases in the latest readings. However, it should be noted that high-frequency data in the property sector tend to overweight large top-tier cities where fundamentals are more supportive of a faster recovery. Smaller lower-tier cities, by contrast, continue to struggle due to weak demographic and economic fundamentals as well as dampened price expectations. For many consumption categories, 2022 demand was dramatically below trend and there is still a long way to go for China’s post-Covid recovery, especially for services sectors, mass markets, migrant and young workers.

Four policy expectations

As mobility, consumption, and property have begun to show clear signs of recovering, the growth acceleration that the market expect this year is broadly on track. As a result, cyclical policy in aggregate should be less stimulative this year than last year. In fact, the PBOC has allowed interbank market rates (e.g., DR007) to increase to the level of policy rates (e.g., 7-day OMO), a sign of policy normalization after very loose liquidity conditions during and after the Shanghai lockdown last year (Exhibit 4).1 Despite higher headline official on-budget deficit and LGSB quota that will likely be released on the first day of the NPC, Goldman expects the augmented fiscal deficit, a more comprehensive gauge of fiscal stance, to narrow by 1.5% of GDP from 2022 to 2023.

But this is not to say that policy will tighten in the same abrupt and significant manner as it did in 2020H2. Precisely because the withdrawal of policy support and the imposition and tightening measures were too much too fast back then, policymakers will be more patient this time around, especially when the potential downside risk from weaker external demand remains considerable and confidence remains fragile. Even though the February PMIs were much stronger than expected and property prices in top-tier cities appear to be edging higher again, a meaningful withdrawal of policy support is unlikely until at least Q3 this year.

Policymakers have been reiterating the message of enhancing domestic demand and boosting private consumption since last December’s Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC). However, the likelihood of significant nationwide cash handouts remains very low. Between budget constraints and cultural preferences, the government will continue the past approach of using infrastructure investment to stimulate the economy when needed. Consumption-boosting measures will likely stay within the realm of tax subsidies for autos and home appliances, accelerated rental housing construction, and small-scale local consumption coupons.

Although the precise policy stance announced at or after the Two Sessions is difficult to predict, especially with the once-in-a-decade reshuffling at the State Council and in various ministries, there should effectively be a “policy put” for at least 5% growth this year. With GDP growth only reaching 3% last year and with 2023 marking the first year of the new premier’s 10-year term, the government’s tolerance for below 5% GDP growth this year will be low.

Two key risks, one external and one domestic

The most significant downside risk to China’s 2023 economic growth is exports. Chinese exports fell sharply in late 2022 (-9.9% yoy in December), in line with the experience of other export-oriented economies such as South Korea and Taiwan and suggesting external demand has indeed been softening. Recent media reports also highlighted empty containers at ports and dwindling overseas orders. Goldman’s baseline expectation is flat real goods exports this year as its global team projects no recession in the US or Europe over the next 12 months. However, if exports turn out to be a lot weaker than expected, policymakers may need to boost monetary/fiscal easing and infrastructure building again. Given the more limited fiscal space after last year’s efforts to stabilize the economy, additional infrastructure investment would likely be financed through policy banks and commercial banks instead of government debt.

Onshore conversations suggest business and consumer confidence remains the main risk to growth domestically. Without confidence, the post-Covid recovery may not be sustainable as private firms are reluctant to invest and households are reluctant to spend. The recent message from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection against “financial elites” and “hedonism and extravagance” has raised concerns that anti-corruption campaign could intensify this year. Hence, communications from the top economic and financial policymakers in the new government after the Two Sessions will be particularly important to watch.

There are certainly other risks in the economy. US-China relations have weighed on investor sentiment after the balloon incident, US Secretary of the State Antony Blinken postponing his trip to China, and media reports of China considering supplying arms to Russia. We may see more negative headlines in the coming months. However, this is a structural issue and the impact on economic growth this year still looks limited thus far. Financial risks from small and rural banks and local government financing vehicles (LGFV) could re-emerge later this year if NPLs are recognized and interest rates rise after policy normalization. But such risks can be managed and the Zunyi LGFV bond restructuring in January was an example. Risks of policy overtightening also appear low due to the experience of 2020/2021, and as discussed earlier, policymakers will be more patient this year.

Overall, China’s post-Covid recovery has just started with some encouraging signs, setting the stage for Goldman’s forecast of 5.5% full-year GDP growth (and 6.5% yoy in Q4) which is above consensus (Bloomberg consensus 5.2%). The government is likely to remain patient in withdrawing support, and to stand by to ease in the event that recovery disappoints or exports fall short. After the strong February PMI print, the market will be focusing on hard data such as January/February trade (to be released on March 7) and retail sales (to be released on March 15). If these hard data surprise meaningfully to the upside, the risk-on market movements featuring stronger RMB and higher equity/rates/commodities will continue.