China is preparing to raise billions of dollars for its largest-ever semiconductor fund, aiming to fast-track the advancement of cutting-edge technologies in response to Washington’s worsening trade and tech war. 

According to Bloomberg, China’s National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund is pooling capital from local governments, their investment arms, and state-owned enterprises. Sources familiar with the situation said the fund is expected to collect more than 200 billion yuan, or $27 billion. 

Referred to as the “Big Fund,” the state-backed entity will help finance several pools of capital managed by other general partners under a “fund of funds” structure to increase deal sourcing and investment strategies to boost semiconductors and artificial intelligence investments. This comes as the Biden administration prepares to escalate technology trade curbs. 

The people also said negotiations about the fundraising are progressing and subject to change, and it could take months to finalize. 

Bloomberg pointed out that Big Fund will assist domestic companies, such as Huawei Technologies and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, in becoming less reliant on advanced processors and semiconductor equipment from the US or Europe. 

“Beijing’s goal now is to pool valuable capital across the country for major projects, a key element in President Xi Jinping’s “whole nation” approach,” according to the source.

China’s drive towards self-reliance follows the US and its allies, such as the Netherlands, Germany, South Korea, and Japan, ratcheting up trade restrictions on advanced semiconductor technology over the last year.

And just how reliant is Huawei on the US? 

In a separate Bloomberg report earlier today, it was revealed that Huawei and SMIC relied on US technology to produce advanced 7-nanometer chips for the Mate 60 Pro released last year. 

This suggests that China still can’t entirely replace some foreign components from its most advanced chips. 

The Big Fund is a clear move by Beijing to increase technological self-sufficiency from the West. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is spending tens of billions of dollars to boost the US semiconductor industry and reduce its reliance on China. 

All this simply reinforces the global shift to a multi-polar state.

By Adam Andrzejewski of Open The Books substack

The University of Virginia (UVA) has at least 235 employees under its “diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)” banner — including 82 students — whose total cost of employment is estimated at $20 million. That’s $15 million in cash compensation plus an additional 30-percent for the annual cost of their benefits.

In contrast, last Friday, the University of Florida dismissed its DEI bureaucracy, saving students and taxpayers $5 million per year. The university terminated 13 full-time DEI positions and 15 administrative faculty appointments. Those funds have been re-programmed into a “faculty recruitment fund” to attract better people who actually teach students.

No such luck for learning at Virginia’s flagship university – founded by Thomas Jefferson no less. UVA has a much deeper DEI infrastructure.

Reform or abolition must await this summer’s anticipated changes in the school’s Board of Visitors. At least until then, the very highly compensated, generally non-teaching, DEI staffers are safely embedded throughout the entire university – while costing students and taxpayers a fortune.

Our team of auditors at OpenTheBooks.com reviewed the university payroll file for 2023 to sort out the DEI position head counts, compensation, and then estimated the cost of benefits.

Meet The Top Paid DEI Executives

Martin N. Davidson, senior associate dean of the Darden School of Business & global chief diversity officer, earns the most in a DEI role, at $452,000, or $587,340 including benefits. For comparison, Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia earned $175,000.

The second most highly compensated DEI executive is Kevin G. McDonald, the vice president for diversity, equity, inclusion and community partnerships, who takes home $401,465, or an estimated $520,000 with benefits.

Those in DEI leadership roles such as vice presidents, associate/assistant deans, directors, assistant directors and managers earned up to $312,000 last year, or $400,000 with benefits.

When McDonald began in his position in August 2019, he was making $340,000, eligible for a 10-percent bonus every year. His first year, he was given a $25,000 recruitment bonus and up to $30,000 for relocation costs, according to UVA records provided through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

Some of the DEI chiefs have been transparent about their philosophies during their public comments. For example, Rachel Spraker, an assistant vice president for equity & inclusive excellence – where she earned $186,800 last year or $242,840 with benefits – described the opioid epidemic in Appalachia as an example of “white toxicity.”

DEI staff aren’t the only well-paid employees in controversial roles at UVA.

Lanice Avery, an assistant professor of psychology in the departments of Psychology and Women, Gender and Sexuality, makes $102,200 ($132,860 with estimated benefits). She runs the Research on Intersectionality, Sexuality, and Empowerment (RISE) Lab at UVA and writes and speaks about black, female sexuality, and describes herself as a “board-certified sexologist” and speaks online about her orgasms.

UVA’s DEI Infrastructure

What does the DEI bureaucracy do?

There are 187 UVA employees and students dedicated to “assist and monitor all units of the University in their efforts to recruit and retain faculty, staff, and student from historically underrepresented groups and to provide affirmative and supportive environments for work and life…”

Here are some of the university agencies committed to the DEI mission. If you think you are seeing double in this list, you are right:

• Equity Center (110 employees total: 37 employees +73 students),
• Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (17 employees +1 student),
• Multicultural Student Services (6 employees +10 students),
• Office of Diversity & Engagement (3 employees + 4 students)
• Center for Diversity (4 students)

Included in the DEI employment roster are another 31 people working in DEI roles sprinkled throughout other departments, including the Urology Department, in Occupational Programs, for the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and other areas.

Then, there are another 48 employees and students working in roles related to DEI and advancing equality for women, minorities, etc.

• Maxine Platzer Lynn Women’s Center (21 employees, including 4 undergrad students/interns)
• Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights (16 employees working on Title IX compliance, sexual misconduct investigations and Americans with Disabilities Act compliance, among other things)
• Office of African American Affairs (4 employees)
• Center for Global Health Equity (4 employees and 3 student employees working on providing health services to mostly Third World countries)

Not included in the DEI numbers for this investigation were the Women, Gender and Sexuality Department with 10 professors making a collective $857,103 last year ($1.1 million with benefits) and the Psychology Department with 87 employees making $8.4 million ($11 million with benefits).

Adding to the confusion, the university has consistently undercounted DEI staffers in presentations to the public. In April 2023, Kevin McDonald told the New York Times that UVA had only 40 DEI employees. In May 2023, a presentation to the Board of Visitors claimed UVA had only 55 DEI positions.

Even our list of 235 employees is not complete. Here is a great example of an executive with a hidden DEI mission:

Kimberley Barker, Librarian for Digital Life ($80,000, or $104,000 with benefits). Barker isn’t in our database, however, she is the DEI leader for the Health System Library – the “IDEA (Inclusion Diversity Equity Accessibility) lead. Her university bio page lists her as the “Librarian for Belonging and Community Engagement.”

Summary

UVA was founded by Thomas Jefferson, the author of our Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s work presented the moral case for a common freedom among all men. The university has an historic opportunity to promote the time-tested principles:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

But, instead of working towards the ideal of the Shining City on the Hill under Jeffersonian principles, his university embraced the divisive quotas of the neo-Marxist DEI crowd.

Tens of millions of dollars in student tuition and taxpayer monies are flowing into promoting anti-American notions and radical philosophies that judge the color of one’s skin instead of the content – and competence – of their character.

Students, taxpayers and all who care about learning can look to Florida as the beacon of a new day. Perhaps Virginia, a birthplace of our Constitutional republic, home to birth places of individual rights and freedoms in America, will emulate the model.

“I want to respectfully present an alternative view of the State of The Union,” retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor said in a video posted on X. 

Macgregor begins by explaining how the Constitution mandates that the government promote the general welfare. This obligates Washington to secure the basic necessities of life, such as energy, food, and shelter. 

“Regrettably, the current administration is failing to perform these tasks,” Macgregor said. 

The combat war veteran and former senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense under the Trump administration, who is now the CEO of the media company “Our Country, Our Choice,” said Biden claims the economy is booming but noted that “much of it comes from government spending and employment,” adding that the government share of GDP is 42%—including federal, state, and local spending. 

“This outrageous share is similar to what it was in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s—before the collapse. Rampant inflation stemming from this government share of the economy makes it difficult for families to buy nutritious food,” Macgregor said. 

He touched on runaway inflation, which has decimated households in recent years, indicating that families are struggling to survive in the era of failed Bidenomics. 

Macgregor segways into an ominous warning that ZeroHedge readers have understood for years: “Our national security is compromised.” 

He warned about broken supply chains, power plants, and manufacturing facilities lacking critical spare parts. He blasted “ill-conceived domestic policies” that have sparked widespread job loss and homelessness. 

Macgregor then focused on how decades of empire-building have drained America’s resources. 

He pivoted back to the bloated government, explaining that there are between 12 and 25 million government workers and contractors. He added that this is all happening as national sovereign debt skyrockets to $34 trillion—or $1 trillion every three months. 

Hedge Fund Manager: The US Issues $1 Trillion In Debt Ever 100 Days, Just Imagine The Pace Of Deficit Spending In A Deep Recession https://t.co/oNpU9C4JzH

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 4, 2024

“It’s impossible to drain the swamp with unsound money and colossal debt that we cannot sustain,” Macgregor said. 

He continued: “Tragically, DC beltway politicians are controlled by the so-called donor class. This form of corruption is enabled by a cancerous central banking system … this ruling class orchestrates endless wars, enriching themselves and their cronies while sending our soldiers to serve in foreign lands of marginal strategic interest to the United States.” 

Macgregor then warned about the invasion on the open southern border, indicating, “This uncontrolled influx is straining our resources, overwhelming our communities, and destroying our prosperity.” 

“Reckless calls to defund and punish the police have crippled law enforcement. Officers are underfunded, undermanned, and unable to protect our citizens, making our cities unsafe for all, especially women, children, and the elderly,” he said. 

Listen to Macgregor’s alternative State of The Union speech compared with Biden’s ridiculous speech, which focused on funding Ukraine and anti-Trump talk. 

Col. Douglas Macgregor offers his State of our Union address.pic.twitter.com/a3WbQKMKjX

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 8, 2024

Perhaps Macgregor is the kind of leader this nation needs to save it from globalists and radical leftists who attempt a controlled demolition. 

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

This month marks the fourth anniversary of one of the most disastrous assaults on human rights in American history. It was on March 16, 2020 that the President Trump issued “guidelines” for “15 days to slow the spread” which stated that “Governors of states with evidence of community transmission should close schools in affected and surrounding areas.”

The administration instructed all members of the public to “listen to and follow the directions of your state and local authorities.”

It was at this time that an American president, for the first time in American history, introduced the idea that it was possible—and perfectly legal—for government institutions to “close down” the economy by forcibly shutting, en masse, countless businesses, schools, and churches. Trump stated repeatedly in press conferences that it was up to government officials to decide “if we open up.” It quickly became standard procedure for health bureaucrats, governors, and media figures to casually speak of “closing the economy” or “opening up” as if we were talking about a coffee shop deciding on closing time.

Meanwhile, across the country, local law enforcement officers willingly worked to arrest or harass business owners, worshipers at church, soccer moms at the park, and anyone else with the temerity to venture outdoors for activities not approved by the ruling class. 

The small minority of Americans that remained committed to human rights and private property soon discovered how powerless they really are. Many dissenters were dismayed by a lack of action from the courts, and how elected officials were apparently unwilling or unable to rein in the vast new powers of “health” officials. Was there nothing that could limit the state’s power? This was confusing for many people because many have been (and remain) enamored of the idea that written constitutions limit state power when it matters most. 

Many dissenters learned a valuable lesson from the experience, however: during the Covid Panic of 2020 and 2021, it became abundantly clear how little constitutional government and the so-called “rule of law” actually limit a regime’s power in times of perceived emergency. It is during emergencies, in fact, when we learn who really holds political power, and how ineffective are constitutional measures designed to limit it.

True Power Is Revealed by Emergencies 

As the Covid Panic revealed to us, the real, de facto ruling class is the executive state which effortlessly ruled by decree during the covid crisis. This ruling clique—an oligarchy of governors, academic “experts,” media billionaires, and countless nameless and faceless unelected bureaucrats—has illustrated in recent years how irrelevant elected lawmakers can be to the use of political power.

This problem is not new, nor have scholars only recently noticed it. Libertarian political scientists Carlo Lottieri and Marco Bassani have noted that the problem of emergency power has long been a concern for radical free-market liberals, especially those of the Italian school of elitism. These scholars recognized that political power in times of emergencies is exercised by individual persons who are unconcerned with abstract limits on their power. This fact is fundamentally at odds with the abstractions of the constitutionalists who imagine that the state monopoly on coercion can be rendered relatively harmless via written constitutions. That is, the constitutionalists believe the written law will somehow restrain the ruling class, even in emergencies. 

In practice, however, this doesn’t happen. Lottieri and Bassani explain what the constitutionalists get wrong:

The constitutionalist claim to justify the State’s monopoly of violence has been challenged directly by the radical libertarian tradition (Molinari) and by individualist anarchists (such as Lysander Spooner). However, an important role in bringing the modern State into perspective has also been played by European political realism and, in particular, by Carl Schmitt and the Italian elitist scholars (Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto).

Schmitt’s importance rests very much on his intuition that in every State there is first a political dimension and then a decision, which cannot be obscured by the so-called “impersonality” of law and the “super-individuality” of orders. Beyond the apparent abstraction of the State … Schmitt uncovered choices, interests, and, in short, people that impose their will on others.

The constitutional thought of classical and contemporary liberalism has constantly tried to neutralize politics, but it has failed. … [T]he real sovereign is the political group that has the final decision about the critical situation, in the state of emergency. The locus of sovereignty thus becomes the political entity (which in our time is the State), and the decision on the state of emergency is the ultimate test of sovereignty. Legal positivism tried hard to refute the importance of this notion, but critical decision making is paramount in the development of human relations.

Lottieri further notes that the fantasy of a neutral regime constrained by mere legal barriers is “simply impossible.” Yet, the naive view has often made the state appear less dangerous and has convinced many to accept the state’s monopoly of violence. 

This is illustrated in the fact that the efforts to implement lockdowns in the United States were thoroughly bipartisan. Opposition to lockdowns was virtually nonexistent within regime institutions themselves. The Trump administration, the CDC, the legacy media, social media, state medical boards, state governors, and local health officials were all more or less in lockstep in March and April 2020. Resistance came overwhelmingly from non-elites; from ordinary people who were being persecuted by state agents—i.e., law enforcement officers and health officials—for opening businesses and attending church. It was only after non-elite political opposition began to look uncontrollable that some state institutions began to relent. 

Yet, even as some pockets of resistance appeared, national elites remained virtually untouched and the federally declared “state of emergency” persisted until May 2023. 

Perhaps the most important tool of the elites during all this—the monopoly power over the creation of money—was strengthened to levels never before seen. In a normal world, the power to destroy countless Americans’ livelihoods by decree would have faced fierce and immediate—and perhaps violent—opposition. The elite’s ability to create money via the central bank, however, essentially provided a means of bribing the public into compliance. It worked, and much of the public still doesn’t even make a connection between this ruse and the current impoverishment of the public via price inflation. 

The Regime Is Still in Control 

Now, nearly four years later, the regime and its elites have faced no real reckoning over their nearly untrammeled attacks on human rights and private property. Federal courts have been extremely cautious to avoid any ruling that might significantly reduce the emergency powers of the regime. The courts have taken exception with how the regime executed certain policies, such as when the court struck down the administration’s attempt to impose a nationwide vaccine mandate via OSHA. Yet, most challenges to government mandates were left unanswered because legal challenges were declared moot as the regime ended its mandates—for the moment. As a result, these powers will remain available to the regime the next time it decides to declare an emergency.  

Moreover, in times of crisis, regimes can justify virtually anything using a complex legal system in which interpretations are extremely flexible. We see this, for example, in the federal moratorium on evictions which relied on paper-thin legal claims. Whether or not the legal claims seem plausible to a normal person—i.e., a person outside the ruling class—is immaterial. What matters is that the ruling regime is able to twist legal meanings and interpretations to its own purposes to essentially rule by decree during the crisis.

Unfortunately, we find very few of the powers seized and exercised during this period are convincingly curtailed. Most of these powers—especially those of the central bank—will return in force during the next “emergency,” even if the regime has to rely on slightly different legal claims and methods. 

The Regime Will Take Whatever Power It Can 

The regime’s efforts to exercise vast new powers were supercharged by the fact that the public offered so little resistance. The “free money” from the central bank helped in this, but the bribery was only part of the equation. The unfortunate fact is much of the public accepted the claims of the elite “experts” that the lockdowns and mandates were all perfectly legitimate and fully necessary. 

During the Covid Panic, we saw Ludwig von Mises’s views on political power played out in real time. Mises understood that political power is not limited by words on parchment or legal theories. Power is limited only by ideological resistance to the state that then manifests as practical political opposition. Mises writes: 

Thus, there has never been a political power that voluntarily desisted from impeding the free development and operation of the institution of private ownership of the means of production. Governments tolerate private property when they are compelled to do so, but they do not acknowledge it voluntarily in recognition of its necessity. Even liberal politicians, on gaining power, have usually relegated their liberal principles more or less to the background. The tendency to impose oppressive restraints on private property, to abuse political power, and to refuse to respect or recognize any free sphere outside or beyond the dominion of the state is too deeply ingrained in the mentality of those who control the governmental apparatus of compulsion and coercion for them ever to be able to resist it voluntarily. A liberal government is a contradictio in adjecto. Governments must be forced into adopting liberalism by the power of the unanimous opinion of the people; that they could voluntarily become liberal is not to be expected. 

We have every reason to believe that federal, state, and local covid-related emergency powers would have been exercised with far greater enthusiasm by the regime had it not been for the resistance of the vocal minority. 

If we want to know what really limited the regime’s power during the Covid Panic, we must look to the “do-not-comply” activists who were willing to lose jobs and social status as a result of their opposition to the regime. It was primarily the people portrayed as crazed malcontents by the regime who stood between the regime and the full use of its power. The US constitution and the Bill of Rights played virtually no role in limiting the state’s power during the emergency. The naive view of constitutionalism would have us believe that everything worked as designed as the “balance of powers” maintained a rule of law. That’s not what happened. What remains of freedom today was saved by nothing other than the limited amount of public resistance that made the regime think twice about extending indefinitely its experiment in tyranny. 

This partial victory does not mean the regime has been defeated, of course. The elites have been slightly chastened, but they have kept most of their powder dry and simply wait for the next emergency during which these powers can again be exercised with at least as much vigor.

President Joe Biden has apologized for accurately using the term “illegal” during Thursday night’s State of the Union address during a tense exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene over the murder of Laken Riley – whose name Biden mispronounced before uttering the verboten word that clearly upset the left.

During the SOTU, Greene taunted Biden to say Riley’s name – adding that she was killed “by an illegal.”

“Lincoln. Lincoln Riley,” Biden responded, mispronouncing Laken’s name. “An innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” Biden continued.

This sent the left into histrionics, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) firing the first shot – scolding Biden during an appearance on CNN.

Nancy Pelosi just criticized Biden for using the term “illegal” when describing Laken Riley’s killer instead of “undocumented”

You can’t make this up pic.twitter.com/6DGzEc7VZw

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) March 8, 2024

Biden was then confronted outside of Air Force One over the comment, for which he reframed his words as as “Technically, not supposed to be here.”

Even Joe Biden knows that Democrats have lost the plot on illegal immigration and is not walking back his statement, while former Speaker Pelosi & his campaign advisors are still worried about hurting their feelings with semantics.

Biden sees the polls.pic.twitter.com/qCJQ3xoRIT https://t.co/iQofUwtLd9

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) March 9, 2024

And so, Biden’s handlers (or whoever) thought it would be a great idea to make the elderly sitting President apologize on national television – yet didn’t think it important enough to apologize to Laken Riley’s family for mispronouncing her name, or causing the border crisis that may have been directly responsible for her death.

“I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” Biden told MSNBC‘s Jonathan Capehart in Atlanta.

NEW: President Biden tells @CapehartJ that he regrets using the word “illegal” during his State of the Union speech to refer to the alleged killer of Laken Riley.

“I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal.’ It’s undocumented.”

Tune in at 6pm ET on MSNBC for the full interview. pic.twitter.com/EX7XuyhF1N

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 9, 2024

In response to Biden’s apology for offending illegals, former President Trump has called on Biden to apologize to Riley’s family for mispronouncing her name, as opposed to “apologizing for the word he used” to describe her killer.

President Trump on Laken Riley’s Killer:

“I say he is an illegal alien, he is an illegal immigrant, he is an illegal migrant, and he should have never been in our country, and he wouldn’t have been under the Trump policies.” pic.twitter.com/vQsoNmFNq6

— Karoline Leavitt (@kleavittnh) March 9, 2024

Trump also hosted Riley’s family at a Saturday rally, where he blamed Biden for her death.

BREAKING: Trump with Laken Riley’s family and friends backstage at his rally. pic.twitter.com/htxsmgbnWg

— Leading Report (@LeadingReport) March 10, 2024

“He should be apologizing to the family as opposed to apologizing for the word that he used which is an accurate description,” said Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita, calling Biden’s response “tone deaf” and a “pivotal moment” that highlights the candidates’ “two very distinct differences in approach on the border invasion.”

“There’s a clear difference,” said LaCivita. “One is sympathetic, coddling, and making excuses. And one wants to put a stop, put an end to it.”

Biden was roundly chastised on X;

He apologizes to Laken Riley’s murderer https://t.co/oZNFhou9FG

— Banana Republic Justice Swan 🍌 (@TheWuhanClan) March 9, 2024

Liberals aren’t upset she was murdered, they’re upset he offended the murderer

Once you understand this, their fried mental model falls into place https://t.co/IgiGk85bF5

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) March 9, 2024

It was fine to disrespect the deceased? Laken Riley’s life was tragically taken by a multiple offender illegal who was let into the country by the Biden administration. https://t.co/g6acorRvkp

— JamieRJN (@JamieRJN) March 9, 2024

Expressing regret for accurately describing the Venezuelan illegal alien charged with bashing in Laken Riley’s skull as an “illegal” is a remarkable moment.

The one and only time Biden mentions her name – he botches it – and now he hopes to avoid offending her alleged killer.

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) March 9, 2024

And it wasn’t lost on the Daily Wire‘s Matt Walsh that Biden falsely claimed that illegal immigrants built America.

The far more outrageous portion of this clip is where he claims that illegal aliens “built the country.” That’s not remotely close to true. Illegals comes here to leech off of what has already been built. https://t.co/l8OOsTuQyJ

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) March 9, 2024

Meanwhile, Biden’s back to slurring…

Biden is slurring hard tonight 😳 pic.twitter.com/pMsJKHZVyR

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 9, 2024

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

In the old days, Jeremy Pauley of Thompson, 42,  would have been called a “grave digger” or “body snatcher.”

However, the harvester of Harvard Medical School’s cadavers  preferred “oddity collector,” thank you very much.

Now, despite an extensive illegal operation in trafficking body parts, Pauley was spared any jail time by federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

Thompson will serve two years of probation after pleading guilty last year to conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property.

The prosecutors dropped charges for dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities and receiving stolen property.

According to the Justice Department, Pauley “admitted to his role in a nationwide network of individuals who bought and sold human remains.” His macabre business involved buying body parts from cadavers donated for medical research before their scheduled cremations. His inside source was Cedric Lodge, who managed the morgue for the Anatomical Gifts Program at Harvard Medical School.

Lodge allegedly ran a type of cadaver market in which he would allow customers to come into the morgue and pick out parts they wanted. Harvard insists that it was entirely unaware of the operation and has condemned the conduct of all those involved.

Pauley had other alleged sources like Candace Chapman Scott, an employee at a Little Rock mortuary. Scott even used Facebook Messenger to send pictures of her inventory including a brain and the heart.

When police went to his house, Pauley told officers that collected “oddities” and that he had 15 to 20 human skulls he had legally purchased in his possession. Later the police returned with a search warrant and found three five-gallon buckets filled with human remains.

The FBI has since arrested three other individuals who allegedly trafficked stolen body parts, including Lodge, Lodge’s wife Denise Lodge, Katrina Maclean of Salem, Massachusetts, and Joshua Taylor of Pennsylvania.

Denise Lodge pleaded guilty to the interstate transport of stolen human remains and faces 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Yet, the “oddities collector” will not go to jail under this plea.

Likewise, Harvard will not be held accountable. Last month, Judge Kenneth W. Salinger dismissed the claims against Harvard and Anatomical Gift Program managers Mark F. Cicchetti and Tracey Fay, citing their immunity under Massachusetts’ Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA).

In the opinion below, Salinger found that Harvard was protected under the Massachusetts Uniform Anatomical Gift Act.  That Act includes a “good faith clause” in the agreement for body donations that excuses even negligence.

A person who acts in accordance with thischapter . . . or who attempts in good faith to do so, shall not be liable for the act in a civil action, criminal prosecution or administrative proceeding.
GL.. c.113A,§18(a).

Salinger held that:

“It follows that a plaintiff cannot overcome the qualified immunity of someone who received a lawful anatomical gift by showing that the recipient was negligent in handling the gift, because a showing of negligence would not demonstrate an absence of good faith.”

So Harvard walks and the “oddities collector” gets no jail time. For its part, Massachusetts hardly appears aggressive in its policing of this area. It may not be an expressly pro-robber digger jurisdiction, but it does not exactly come off as a vigilant monitor of medical schools.

This may or may not be an actual film from the Massachusetts UAGA inspection unit:

An active duty US Army intelligence analyst was arrested on Thursday for sending secret military documents to an unidentified foreign national over a nearly 2-year period. The charges include the unlawful export of defense information to China, but the indictment doesn’t indicate if the foreign national was working for a government. 

Sergeant Korbein Schultz was arrested at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he’s assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and holds a Top Secret clearance. According to the 25-page indictment, Schultz provided someone identified only as “Conspirator A” — who claimed to reside in Hong Kong — with “information regarding the operability of sensitive U.S. military systems and their capabilities.” Those systems included F-22A fighters, the HH-60W helicopter, intercontinental ballistic missiles, B-52 bombers, air defense systems, HIMARS rocket launchers and hypersonic weapons. 

Schultz, a native of Dallas exurb Wills Point, received 14 payments that totaled some $42,000. It’s not clear if this Sergeant Schultz will plead “I know nothing!” 

In addition to weapon-specific information, prosecutors say Schultz also shared big-picture documents, including US research on foreign countries such as China, studies on the future development of US military forces, and recaps of American military drills and operations. The files included documents, maps, manuals and photographs. 

Conspirator A’s identity was revealed to the grand jury that indicted him, but, for now, it’s a secret to the rest of us. The indictment only describes the individual as “a foreign national purporting to reside in Hong Kong” who claimed to work for a “geopolitical consulting firm based overseas.” The word “purported” would seem to suggest that investigators either don’t know if Conspirator A lived in Hong Kong, or they know that he or she doesn’t. The indictment doesn’t say if Conspirator A was working for a government.

There’s something of a disconnect between the indictment — which includes multiple charges of Unlawful Export of Defense Articles to China — and the Department of Justice press release, which doesn’t mention the China aspect. However, the Export Control Act charges imply that investigators are confident the recipient was in China. 

Conspirator A sent a variety of specific requests to Schultz. At the outset of the illicit arrangement, Schultz was requested to share lessons learned from the war in Ukraine, and “with those lessons, what the United States could and should do to help defend Taiwan from an attack,” reads the indictment.

After fulfilling that request in the summer of 2022 and receiving a whopping $200, Schultz is said to have proposed a long-term relationship. Prosecutors say it kept going until his recent arrest. In August 2022, he told Conspirator A that he wished he could be Jason Bourne. Then there’s this amusing anecdote: 

On or about May 20, 2023, Conspirator A told KORBEIN SCHULTZ that Conspirator A would like to meet him at a Formula 1 race overseas and make him a “senior partner” with a “big signing bonus.” KORBEIN SCHULTZ responded, “Oh snap!”

“The conduct alleged in today’s indictment represents a grave betrayal of the oath sworn to defend our country,” said FBI Executive Assistant Director Larissa Knapp. “Instead of safeguarding national defense information, the defendant conspired with a foreign national to sell it, potentially endangering our national security.”

The arrest of Sergeant Schultz comes just days after a retired Army lieutenant colonel was charged with sending Ukraine war secrets to a ‘woman’ he met with on a foreign dating site, in what appears to have been a classic honeypot intelligence ploy. 

US Air Force employee indicted for leaking secrets on dating app

The 63-year-old retired Army lieutenant colonel is accused of transmitting confidential information to a person claiming to be a woman living in Ukraine

Details: https://t.co/9dE5LRosXz pic.twitter.com/n9xNa1pJYX

— RT (@RT_com) March 6, 2024

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Can you guess who the quote in the article title is from?  I will give you a hint.  It wasn’t me.  I know that it sounds like it could have come from me, but it actually comes from a very big name on Wall Street. 

Ellen Zentner is Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist, and she is the one that said it. 

During an interview with CNBC she warned that “the tightening impacts from monetary policy” will have enormous consequences for the U.S. economy in the months ahead…

“We will have a hard landing at some point. I guarantee you that. We’re all wondering: When does that come?” she said.

“The point that Dimon makes is that there are these cumulative impacts that build over time, and we are in the camp that we haven’t yet seen all of the tightening impacts from monetary policy,” she added, referring to the impact of Fed rate hikes.

She makes a really great point.

The consequences of interest rate hikes are felt over time.

Higher interest rates have certainly started to cause a lot of problems, but if rates are not brought down soon the level of pain that we are experiencing will begin to go up dramatically.

Unfortunately, the Fed is not likely to reduce interest rates any time soon because inflation continues to run hotter than expected…

Inflation increased by the largest amount in almost a year, according to the Fed’s preferred measure – confirming expectations interest rates will not be cut until around June.

The so-called core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index – which excludes volatile food and energy prices – increased 0.4 percent between December and January.

Marko Kolanovic, the chief market strategist for JPMorgan Chase, believes that the U.S. economy could be headed into “something like 1970s stagflation”…

In an analyst note to clients, the bank’s chief market strategist Marko Kolanovic warned that the economy may turn away from a “Goldilocks” scenario – in which it is not expanding or contracting by too much – and enter a period of stagflation similar to that experienced in the 1970s.

“Going back to the question of market macro regime, we believe that there is a risk of the narrative turning back from Goldilocks towards something like 1970s stagflation, with significant implications for asset allocation,” Kolanovic wrote.

I would argue that we have already been in a period of stagflation.

The economy has certainly been stagnating, and inflation has been unacceptably high.

But now conditions have taken a dramatic turn for the worse in early 2024, and we are seeing some very troubling signs.

For example, I was stunned to learn that a Canadian pension fund has just sold a stake in a Manhattan office tower for just one dollar…

Canadian pension funds have been among the world’s most prolific buyers of real estate, starting a revolution that inspired retirement plans around the globe to emulate them. Now the largest of them is taking steps to limit its exposure to the most-beleaguered property type — office buildings.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has done three deals at discounted prices, selling its interests in a pair of Vancouver towers, a business park in Southern California and a redevelopment project in Manhattan, with the New York stake offloaded for the eyebrow-raising price of just $1. The worry is those deals may set an example for other major investors seeking a way out of the turmoil too.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board had a 29 percent stake in Manhattan’s 360 Park Avenue South.

The plan was to redevelop that property, but at this point the outlook for office buildings is so bad that the pension fund just wanted out.

And so the entire 29 percent stake was sold off for just one dollar.

Do you remember when I warned that we were heading into the worst commercial real estate crash in history?

Well, this is what a crash looks like.

Meanwhile, large employers all over America continue to conduct mass layoffs.

Today, I was saddened to learn that Electronic Arts is laying off approximately 700 workers…

Another day, another round of mass layoffs in the games industry. Electronic Arts (EA) has announced it will cut around five percent of its employees, putting almost 700 people out of a job. It’s also cancelling games and shutting down at least one development studio.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson announced the layoffs in an email to employees, which was subsequently posted to the company’s blog on Wednesday.

And we just learned more details about the layoffs that Citigroup is conducting…

Citigroup is cutting nearly 300 workers in New York as it continues its massive layoff spree in an effort to rein in expenses, according to filings with the State Labor Department.

About 239 workers in the primary banking subsidiary, 44 from its broker-dealer unit and three from its technology arm are getting cut, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices filed this week.

In early January, the company announced that it was cutting 20,000 roles “over the medium-term,” as part of a reorganization effort. The cuts are slated to save the company between $2 billion and 2.5 billion.

We have not seen anything like this since the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009.

On Thursday, Zero Hedge published a list of 50 different mass layoffs that we have seen recently…

1. Everybuddy: 100% of workforce
2. Wisense: 100% of workforce
3. CodeSee: 100% of workforce
4. Twig: 100% of workforce
5. Twitch: 35% of workforce
6. Roomba: 31% of workforce
7. Bumble: 30% of workforce
8. Farfetch: 25% of workforce
9. Away: 25% of workforce
10. Hasbro: 20% of workforce
11. LA Times: 20% of workforce
12. Wint Wealth: 20% of workforce
13. Finder: 17% of workforce
14. Spotify: 17% of workforce
15. Buzzfeed: 16% of workforce
16. Levi’s: 15% of workforce
17. Xerox: 15% of workforce
18. Qualtrics: 14% of workforce
19. Wayfair: 13% of workforce
20. Duolingo: 10% of workforce
21. Rivian: 10% of workforce
22. Washington Post: 10% of workforce
23. Snap: 10% of workforce
24. eBay: 9% of workforce
25. Sony Interactive: 8% of workforce
26. Expedia: 8% of workforce
27. Business Insider: 8% of workforce
28. Instacart: 7% of workforce
29. Paypal: 7% of workforce
30. Okta: 7% of workforce
31. Charles Schwab: 6% of workforce
32. Docusign: 6% of workforce
33. Riskified: 6% of workforce
34. EA: 5% of workforce
35. Motional: 5% of workforce
36. Mozilla: 5% of workforce
37. Vacasa: 5% of workforce
38. CISCO: 5% of workforce
39. UPS: 2% of workforce
40. Nike: 2% of workforce
41. Blackrock: 3% of workforce
42. Paramount: 3% of workforce
43. Citigroup: 20,000 employees
44. ThyssenKrupp: 5,000 employees
45. Best Buy: 3,500 employees
46. Barry Callebaut: 2,500 employees
47. Outback Steakhouse: 1,000
48. Northrop Grumman: 1,000 employees
49. Pixar: 1,300 employees
50. Perrigo: 500 employees

Just look at that list.

That is nuts!

Anyone that thinks that the U.S. economy is heading in the right direction is simply being delusional.

Greg Hunter just interviewed economic analyst David Morgan, and he is warning that we are actually “entering into a global depression the likes of which the world has never seen”…

Economic analyst and financial writer David Morgan has gone against the majority in the past with predictions that seemed unbelievable at the time. One prediction last year is the Fed not cutting interest rates in 2023. The Fed didn’t, and Morgan is still predicting there will be no Fed interest rate cut anytime soon. Now, with a record high stock market, Morgan is predicting “We are entering into a global depression the likes of which the world has never seen.”

Global central banks were able to delay the inevitable by flooding the system with colossal mountains of money.

But that just created a tremendous amount of inflation and now a horrifying economic crisis is coming anyway.

So I would encourage everyone to brace themselves for the “hard landing” that is rapidly approaching, because it is going to be exceedingly painful for the unprepared.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Measuring consumer confidence in the economy is crucial for understanding both current economic strength, as well as how consumers may be expected to act in the future.

So how do people around the world feel about the global economy?

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, uses survey data collected from October 20 to November 3, 2023 by Ipsos. It was first highlighted as part of our 2024 Global Forecast Series.

Which Countries Feel Confident About the Economy in 2024?

Heading into 2024, an average of 50% of polled adults felt confident that the global economy would be stronger than in 2023. But breaking down responses by country shows a vast disparity between responses.

Here are the percentage of respondents who agreed with the following statement: “The global economy will be stronger in 2024 than it was in 2023.” We also note the change in percentage points (p.p.) compared with the same question a year prior.

At the top, India, Indonesia, and China stood as being the most confident about 2024’s economic prospects. 85% of Indian respondents agreed that the global economy will be stronger in 2024 than in 2023, while 82% of Chinese and Indonesian respondents felt the same.

Regional disparities also become evident, with Asian countries making up the top five most confident countries and seven out of the top nine. In fact, South Korea and Japan were the only Asian countries surveyed that were not feeling confident, with Japanese respondents being the least confident (30%) and South Koreans tied for the second-least confident (33%).

Countries in South America ranged from Brazil having a high of 60% of respondents agree with 2024 being stronger than 2023 to Chile having a “low” of 51%. North American countries were more split, with Mexico feeling more confident and Canada feeling less confident.

Lastly, Europe stood out as being the least confident in the global economy in 2024. Only Poland (56%) had more than 50% agree that this year would be better than the last, while major economies like Germany (40%) and France (33%) sat closer to the bottom of the table.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The National Guard and the State Police are now patrolling the New York City subway system in an attempt to do something about the explosion of crime. As part of this, there are bag checks and new surveillance of all passengers. No legislation, no debate, just an edict from the mayor.

Many citizens who rely on this system for transportation might welcome this. It’s a city of strict gun control, and no one knows for sure if they have the right to defend themselves. Merchants have been harassed and even arrested for trying to stop looting and pillaging in their own shops.

The message has been sent: Only the police can do this job. Whether they do it or not is another matter.

Things on the subway system have gotten crazy. If you know it well, you can manage to travel safely, but visitors to the city who take the wrong train at the wrong time are taking grave risks.

In actual fact, it’s guaranteed that this will only end in confiscating knives and other things that people carry in order to protect themselves while leaving the actual criminals even more free to prey on citizens.

The law-abiding will suffer and the criminals will grow more numerous. It will not end well.

When you step back from the details, what we have is the dawning of a genuine police state in the United States. It only starts in New York City. Where is the Guard going to be deployed next? Anywhere is possible.

If the crime is bad enough, citizens will welcome it. It must have been this way in most times and places that when the police state arrives, the people cheer.

We will all have our own stories of how this came to be. Some might begin with the passage of the Patriot Act and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security in 2001. Some will focus on gun control and the taking away of citizens’ rights to defend themselves.

My own version of events is closer in time. It began four years ago this month with lockdowns. That’s what shattered the capacity of civil society to function in the United States. Everything that has happened since follows like one domino tumbling after another.

It goes like this:

1) lockdown,

2) loss of moral compass and spreading of loneliness and nihilism,

3) rioting resulting from citizen frustration, 4) police absent because of ideological hectoring,

5) a rise in uncontrolled immigration/refugees,

6) an epidemic of ill health from substance abuse and otherwise,

7) businesses flee the city

8) cities fall into decay, and that results in

9) more surveillance and police state.

The 10th stage is the sacking of liberty and civilization itself.

It doesn’t fall out this way at every point in history, but this seems like a solid outline of what happened in this case. Four years is a very short period of time to see all of this unfold. But it is a fact that New York City was more-or-less civilized only four years ago. No one could have predicted that it would come to this so quickly.

But once the lockdowns happened, all bets were off. Here we had a policy that most directly trampled on all freedoms that we had taken for granted. Schools, businesses, and churches were slammed shut, with various levels of enforcement. The entire workforce was divided between essential and nonessential, and there was widespread confusion about who precisely was in charge of designating and enforcing this.

It felt like martial law at the time, as if all normal civilian law had been displaced by something else. That something had to do with public health, but there was clearly more going on, because suddenly our social media posts were censored and we were being asked to do things that made no sense, such as mask up for a virus that evaded mask protection and walk in only one direction in grocery aisles.

Vast amounts of the white-collar workforce stayed home—and their kids, too—until it became too much to bear. The city became a ghost town. Most U.S. cities were the same.

As the months of disaster rolled on, the captives were let out of their houses for the summer in order to protest racism but no other reason. As a way of excusing this, the same public health authorities said that racism was a virus as bad as COVID-19, so therefore it was permitted.

The protests had turned to riots in many cities, and the police were being defunded and discouraged to do anything about the problem. Citizens watched in horror as downtowns burned and drug-crazed freaks took over whole sections of cities. It was like every standard of decency had been zapped out of an entire swath of the population.

Meanwhile, large checks were arriving in people’s bank accounts, defying every normal economic expectation. How could people not be working and get their bank accounts more flush with cash than ever? There was a new law that didn’t even require that people pay rent. How weird was that? Even student loans didn’t need to be paid.

By the fall, recess from lockdown was over and everyone was told to go home again. But this time they had a job to do: They were supposed to vote. Not at the polling places, because going there would only spread germs, or so the media said. When the voting results finally came in, it was the absentee ballots that swung the election in favor of the opposition party that actually wanted more lockdowns and eventually pushed vaccine mandates on the whole population.

The new party in control took note of the large population movements out of cities and states that they controlled. This would have a large effect on voting patterns in the future. But they had a plan. They would open the borders to millions of people in the guise of caring for refugees. These new warm bodies would become voters in time and certainly count on the census when it came time to reapportion political power.

Meanwhile, the native population had begun to swim in ill health from substance abuse, widespread depression, and demoralization, plus vaccine injury. This increased dependency on the very institutions that had caused the problem in the first place: the medical/scientific establishment.

The rise of crime drove the small businesses out of the city. They had barely survived the lockdowns, but they certainly could not survive the crime epidemic. This undermined the tax base of the city and allowed the criminals to take further control.

The same cities became sanctuaries for the waves of migrants sacking the country, and partisan mayors actually used tax dollars to house these invaders in high-end hotels in the name of having compassion for the stranger. Citizens were pushed out to make way for rampaging migrant hordes, as incredible as this seems.

But with that, of course, crime rose ever further, inciting citizen anger and providing a pretext to bring in the police state in the form of the National Guard, now tasked with cracking down on crime in the transportation system.

What’s the next step? It’s probably already here: mass surveillance and censorship, plus ever-expanding police power. This will be accompanied by further population movements, as those with the means to do so flee the city and even the country and leave it for everyone else to suffer.

As I tell the story, all of this seems inevitable. It is not. It could have been stopped at any point. A wise and prudent political leadership could have admitted the error from the beginning and called on the country to rediscover freedom, decency, and the difference between right and wrong. But ego and pride stopped that from happening, and we are left with the consequences.

The government grows ever bigger and civil society ever less capable of managing itself in large urban centers. Disaster is unfolding in real time, mitigated only by a rising stock market and a financial system that has yet to fall apart completely.

Are we at the middle stages of total collapse, or at the point where the population and people in leadership positions wise up and decide to put an end to the downward slide? It’s hard to know. But this much we do know: There is a growing pocket of resistance out there that is fed up and refuses to sit by and watch this great country be sacked and taken over by everything it was set up to prevent.