HIDDEN TRUTHS

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Suchir Balaji, an OpenAI whistleblower, was found dead inside his apartment in San Francisco. The medical examiner's office determined the manner of death to be suicide and police officials this week said there is "currently, no evidence of foul play"...



Balaji grew up in Cupertino, California, before attending the University of California, Berkeley to study computer science.

In October, the 26-year-old AI researcher had raised serious concerns about Sam Altman-run chatGPT maker OpenAI "breaking copyright law".

Balaji worked for nearly four years at OpenAI before quitting the company, after he realised the technology would do more harm than good to society, he told The New York Times.

"We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news today and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time”, said an OpenAI spokesperson.

In a post on X in October, Balaji said: "I was at OpenAI for nearly 4 years and worked on ChatGPT for the last 1.5 of them. I initially didn't know much about copyright, fair use, etc. but became curious after seeing all the lawsuits against GenAI companies".

"When I tried to understand the issue better, I came to the conclusion that fair use seems like a pretty implausible defence for a lot of generative AI products, for the basic reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the data they're trained on", he further posted.


THE TRIBUNE 


Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer, was fired in 2022 after publicly claiming that the company’s language model had become sentient.




His name is Claude. He’s an A.I. chatbot. A creation of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic. It’s not designed to draw users into relationships with lifelike A.I. companions, the way apps like Character.AI and Replika are.

To the people who love it, Claude feels more creative and empathetic. Claude is quickly becoming a social sidekick for A.I. insiders.

Claude seemed “more insightful” and “good at helping people spot patterns and blind spots”, said Jeffrey Ladish, an A.I. safety researcher at Palisade Research.

Anthropic has been working on giving Claude more personality. Newer versions have gone through a process known as “character training”. Claude is prompted to produce responses that align with desirable human traits. Claude learnt to “internalize” these principles.

We are on the verge of a profound shift in the way we interact with A.I.


Over the last year and a half, a team of researchers — volunteering for The Daily Clout, a non-profit news outlet — including physicians, a businessman, and a former United States Army Intelligence officer, poured through thousands of pages of documents relating to the study and found that Pfizer had failed to report the deaths of two women — one in Kansas and one in Georgia — during the trial.

They had—in fact—apparently actively covered them up.

The Kansas case was a 63-year-old woman who had her first dose of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine on August 18, 2020, and a second dose on September 8, 2020. She died on October 19, 2020, and her emergency contact immediately informed the clinical site — Alliance for Multispecialty Research LLC, in Newton, Kansas. Thirty-seven days later, on November 25, 2020 — 11 days after the data reporting cutoff date — the death was finally recorded in a “case report form”.

Five days after the Emergency Use Application (EUA) was submitted to the Food and Drug Administration by Pfizer.

The participant’s death was not reported in the trial results in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine or to the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), which approved the EUA.

According to a letter sent by Dr. Jeyanthi Kunadhasan, an anesthetist and perioperative physician in Australia, to Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach — who is suing Pfizer over the vaccine — an autopsy recorded the cause as “sudden cardiac death”, and Pfizer physicians ruled her death was not related to the vaccine, citing “risk factors” for heart disease to include hypertension and obesity.

The second hidden death was a 58-year-old woman in Georgia. 

She received her first dose on August 4, 2020, and a second on August 27, 2020. The woman died in her sleep on November 7, 2020, and her husband immediately informed the clinical site. The death was not added to the data for 26 days and first followed up on December 3, 2020 — again well after the Nov. 14 data cutoff date.

The woman had taken a muscle relaxer and valium for chronic back pain prior to going to bed, but both were medications “previously used by the subject”.

In a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who — like Kobach — is suing Pfizer, Kunadhasan notes that there was no autopsy. The trial investigator simply declared there was “no reasonable possibility that the cardiac arrest was related to the study intervention”.

These two deaths should have been a signal to stop the trial immediately.


Patrick Richardson The Sentinel

Four years ago, on December 11, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA shot for individuals aged 16 and older. In the wake of this decision we have seen a staggering surge in safety reports, adverse events, and fatalities linked to this experimental gene-based product misleadingly labeled as a "vaccine". 

This bleak reality stands in stark contrast to the persistent claims of it being "safe and effective" made by health authorities, governments, mainstream media, and the pharmaceutical companies themselves.

These shots were greenlit by the rushed through and corner-cutting channel of Emergency Use Authorization. The FDA desperately wants the EUA file on the Pfizer/BioNTech shot to remain hidden, even after it was first court-ordered to release the trove of Pfizer documents, a few years ago.

In a further decisive win for transparency, last week, on December 6th, federal judge, Mark T. Pittman ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to disclose its entire "Emergency Use Authorization" file for the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid shot. This ruling came in the wake of the FDA's unsuccessful attempt to terminate a public records lawsuit.

Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is still only authorized under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which benefits from the liability protections.

Interestingly, the judge noted the  significantly lower standards, compared to normal FDA approvals, of the Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs).

“EUA standards for COVID-19 products in some cases, did not require any FDA review of safety or efficacy”.


sonia_elijah Trial Site News

The Biden administration has quietly extended a controversial “emergency declaration” under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act until December 31, 2029.

Conveniently, it ensures that Big Pharma and mRNA vaccine makers remain shielded from liability throughout President Trump’s second term and beyond.

COVID-19 continues to cause significant serious illness, morbidity, and mortality during outbreaks. While the Biden administration insists the extension is a precaution for “future public health emergencies”, critics argue it reeks of cronyism and corruption, benefiting pharmaceutical giants while sidelining the American public’s growing concerns about vaccine injuries and accountability.






McKinsey & Company consulting firm has agreed to pay $650 million to settle a federal investigation into its work to help opioids manufacturer Purdue Pharma boost the sales of the highly addictive drug OxyContin.

As part of the deal with the U.S. Justice Department, McKinsey will avoid prosecution on criminal charges.

“This terrible public health crisis and our past work for opioid manufacturers will always be a source of profound regret for our firm”, the company said. 

Companies officials helped fuel the U.S. addiction and overdose crisis, with opioids linked to more than 80,000 annual deaths in some recent years. For the past decade, most of them have been attributed to illicit fentanyl, which is laced into many illegal drugs. Earlier in the epidemic, prescription pills were the primary cause of death.

Over the past eight years, drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies have agreed to about $50 billion worth of settlements with governments 

Purdue paid McKinsey more than $93 million over 15 years for several products, including how to improve revenue from OxyContin. Prosecutors say McKinsey “knew the risk and dangers” of OxyContin.

The prescriptions “were not for a medically accepted indication, were unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary, and that were often diverted for uses that lacked a legitimate medical purpose”, the filing said.

The deal represents the first time a management consulting firm is being held accountable for advising a client to break the law.

Three Purdue executives pleaded guilty to misbranding charges in 2007 and the company agreed to pay a fine. The company pleaded guilty to criminal charges in 2020 and agreed to $8.3 billion in penalties and forfeitures — most of which will be waived as long as it executes a settlement through bankruptcy court that is still in the works.


GEOFF MULVIHILL, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER AND STEVE LEBLANC AP

The eight-part drama - based on Beth Macy's investigative book of the same name "Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that addicted America" ​​- is a very timely indictment of the capitalist power of Big Pharma and to post-human medicine...


Trade between China and Mexico is central to the fentanyl crisis that killed over 100,000 Americans in 2023. 

Hutchison Whampoa, chaired by the eighty-four-year-old tycoon Li Ka-shing, has operated major ports in Mexico since the 1990s, where the Sinaloa cartel partners with Sun Yee On and 14K Triads to import fentanyl precursors from Wuhan.

Hutchison’s main investor was also co-owner of an industrial company with a Macau billionaire named Ng Lap Seng “a suspected Triad member (US law enforcement link him to drugs prostitution control in Western US)”.

Ng Lap Seng — a property developer that partnered in a Macau casino with a Red Princeling and Sun Yee On associate — was probed for funnelling hundreds of thousands into the Democratic National Committee in a campaign finance scandal that enabled Ng to meet President Bill Clinton, visiting the White House ten times from 1994 to 1996.

Ports, Fentanyl, Corruption: Beijing's Triad of threats to the United States

Sam Cooper The Bureau



World-leading scientists have called for a halt on research to create “mirror life” microbes.

The international group of Nobel laureates and other experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections.

“The threat we’re talking about is unprecedented”, said Prof Vaughn Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pittsburgh. The expert group includes Dr Craig Venter, the US scientist who led the private effort to sequence the human genome in the 1990s.

The DNA of all living organisms is made from “right-handed” nucleotides, while proteins, the building blocks of cells, are made from “left-handed” amino acids. Why nature works this way is unclear. Artificial mirror molecules could be turned into therapies for chronic and hard-to-treat diseases, while mirror microbes could make bioproduction facilities, which use bugs to churn out chemicals, more resistant to contamination.

The report sees substantial risks and calls for a global debate.


Ian Sample The Guardian


“There’s a revolution coming”. Joe Lonsdale, founder of software company Palantir and startup investor said at a recent defense forum, “where we hold the bureaucracy accountable, where we shock the bureaucracy”.

Palantir’s chief technology officer, Shyam Sankar, is being considered for the Pentagon’s top research and engineering job. Trae Stephens, co-founder and chair of Anduril Industries, is also in the mix for a high-ranking job at the Pentagon.

The executives all have investments and stakes in multiple companies working with the Pentagon and will need to determine how they detangle a web of potential conflicts of interest — such as Anduril’s drone development or Palantir’s software platforms the Pentagon is helping fund.

Several other serial investors with deep interests in defense companies — such as SpaceX’s Elon Musk and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen — are close to Trump and playing a role in putting the new administration together.

“Warfare is always a human endeavor”, said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, “the future is really about the most effective human-machine teaming”.


PAUL MCLEARY JACK DETSCH Politico


Two separate reports from media freedom organisations that analysed the deaths of reporters worldwide this year found Israel carried out a “massacre” of journalists in Gaza, an accusation denied by the Israeli government.

An annual report published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) found the Israeli army killed 18 journalists – two in Lebanon and 16 in Gaza – as they were working this year.

The toll, equivalent to around a third of the total worldwide of 54, was described by RSF as “an unprecedented massacre”.

In total, “more than 145” journalists have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since the start of the war there in October 2023, with 35 of them working at the time of their deaths, the report found.

RSF has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “war crimes committed against journalists by the Israeli army”.


Al Jazeera





The end, when it came for the BGP5 barracks, was loud and brutal. It was a ferocious battle - perhaps the bloodiest of the civil war which has consumed Myanmar since the military seized power in a coup in 2021.

Inside the wrecked buildings the victorious Arakan Army filmed piles of bodies. Brigadier-General Thurein Tun, and his officers kneeling beneath the flagpole, now flying the insurgents' banner.

BGP5 (Border Guard Police) - a compound covering around 20 hectares just outside the border town of Maungdaw, built on the site of a Muslim Rohingya village, Myo Thu Gyi, which was burned down during the violent expulsion of much of the Rohingya population by the armed forces in 2017 - was the Myanmar military junta's last stand in northern Rakhine State, which lies along the border with Bangladesh.

For the coup leader, General Min Aung Hlaing, this has been yet another humiliating defeat after a year of military setbacks. For the first time his regime has lost control of an entire border: the 270km (170 miles) dividing Myanmar from Bangladesh now wholly under rebels control.

The AA's victory poses more worrying questions. It's  unclear how the AA will treat the Rohingya population, still thought to number around 600,000 in Rakhine. Relations with the ethnic Rakhine majority, the support base for the AA, have long been fraught.





Georgian lawmakers elected Mikheil Kavelashvili, a hardline critic of the West, as president, setting him up to replace a pro-Western incumbent amid major protests against the government over a halt to the country’s European Union accession talks.

The ruling Georgian Dream party’s move to freeze the EU accession process until 2028, abruptly halting a long-standing national goal that is written into the country’s constitution, has provoked widespread anger in Georgia, where opinion polls show that seeking EU membership is overwhelmingly popular.

Kavelashvili, a former professional soccer player, has strongly anti-Western, often conspiratorial views. In public speeches this year, he has repeatedly alleged that Western intelligence agencies are seeking to drive Georgia into war with Russia, which ruled Georgia for 200 years until 1991.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in light snowfall outside parliament ahead of the presidential vote. Some played soccer in the street outside and waved red cards at the parliament building, a mocking reference to Kavelashvili’s sporting career.

Kavelashvili, nominated for the mostly ceremonial presidency last month by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire ex-prime minister who is widely seen as the country’s paramount leader and has moved to deepen ties with neighbouring Russia, is a leader of People’s Power, an anti-Western splinter group of the ruling party, and was a co-author of a law on “foreign agents” that requires organisations receiving more than 20% of their funding from overseas to register as agents of foreign influence, and imposes heavy fines for violations.

Outgoing President Salome Zourabichvili, a pro-EU critic of the ruling Georgian Dream party, has positioned herself as a leader of the protest movement and has said she will remain president after her term ends. She considers parliament illegitimate as a result of alleged fraud in the October election.


Felix Light Reuters

Brazilian beef has long been mired in controversy as a top cause of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, a critical line of defence against climate breakdown. But it would not get on to supermarket shelves worldwide without major international shipping firms.

Over a two-year period, companies including Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk and the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) transported more than half a million tonnes of beef and leather from abattoirs linked to tropical forest destruction in Brazil, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) can reveal. The weight equates to half the UK’s annual beef consumption.

The findings have prompted calls for the companies to be held responsible. “Major shipping companies are the silent enablers in the billion-dollar global trade of deforestation-risk commodities like beef and leather”, said Alex Wijeratna, senior director at environmental campaign group Mighty Earth. “But they slip under the radar when it comes to legal accountability”.

New data from the consultancy AidEnvironment shows that from August 2021 to July 2023, 12 meat plants run by Brazil’s biggest three beef companies – JBS, Marfrig and Minerva – were linked to at least 4,600 sq km of forest loss, an area three times the size of London. 

Landmark EU legislation designed to tackle deforestation linked to beef, soy and other goods was due to come into force at the end of 2024, but will be postponed for one year. 


Andrew Wasley Grace Murray The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

“We should be the new El Dorado of medical cannabis production”, said agronomist Jose Martins as dozens of workers harvested marijuana in bright sunshine at a farm in southeastern Portugal.

The country is fast becoming a European hub for medical cannabis, with its warm temperate subtropical climate — often compared to California’s — making it an ideal place to grow the plant. "No other country in Europe has better environmental conditions”. Martins told AFP at the plantation, which is surrounded by razor wire and infrared cameras.

Set in hills near Serpa dotted with olive trees and cork oaks, the 5.4-hectare (13.3-acre) farm owned by the Portuguese pharmaceutical company FAI Therapeutic produces around 30 tonnes of cannabis flowers a year. More than 60 companies are currently authorised to grow, produce or distribute medical cannabis products there, with 170 more having applied for permission.


Cannabis Culture




South Korea's parliament has voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived attempt to impose martial law earlier this month.

Mr Yoon's decision plunged the country into a constitutional crisis as soldiers clashed with protesters on the streets of the capital Seoul.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have braved the bitter cold and poured onto the streets of the city every night for the past two weeks, calling for Mr Yoon's removal and arrest.

The state of emergency only lasted about six hours as parliament voted to block the decree.


The Times and The Sunday Times YouTube

LETTURE





Poetica, onirica, visionaria, capace di raccontare la brutalità del potere e la violenza della realtà.

Han Kang è la prima scrittrice sudcoreana a vincere il Premio Nobel per la Letteratura.

Premiata dall'Accademia di Svezia "per la sua intensa prosa poetica che mette a confronto i traumi storici con la fragilità della vita umana''.

Innovativa, sperimentale, la scrittrice, 53 anni, diventata un caso editoriale, si è fatta conoscere nel mondo con il suo libro "La Vegetariana", con cui ha vinto nel 2016 il Man Booker International Prize, la storia di una donna che si vuole trasformare in una pianta e rifiuta la razza umana, concepita in tre atti. Un cambiamento a cui il marito reagisce con un crescendo di rabbia che arriva al sadismo sessuale.



Il suo ottavo romanzo, "Non dico Addio", apparso nel 2021 in Francia dove ha ricevuto il Prix Médicis Étranger 2023, è la storia di un arduo e doloroso viaggio compiuto d'inverno da Gyeong-ha, la protagonista, per raggiungere l'isola di Jeju dove il papagallino della sua amica Inseon, ricoverata in ospedale a Seul, è rimasto solo e rischia di morire. Al suo arrivo, dopo aver affrontato la tempesta e il gelo, non potrà che seppellirlo ma la discesa agli inferi è anche nella storia della famiglia di Inseon e di uno dei massacri più terribili della Corea tra la fine del 1948 e i primi mesi del 1949, ai danni di trentamila civili accusati di essere comunisti.



"Atti Umani" con cui ha vinto il Premio Malaparte nel 2017, in cui si è ispirata ad un episodio di rivolta urbana realmente avvenuto nel 1980 a Gwangju, dove è cresciuta e dove centinaia di studenti e civili disarmati furono assassinati durante un massacro compiuto dall'esercito sudcoreano. 

In Italia, paese che ama e che ha visitato molte volte, è uscito anche "Convalescenza" nel 2019. 



La sua prosa intima e visionaria si ritrova anche ne "L'Ora di Greco", apparso per la prima volta nel 2011, sull'importanza delle parole perdute e ritrovate. 



"In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill.

In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. 

But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes.

All these dangers are caused by human intervention In natural processes and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. 

The real enemy then is humanity itself.

It would seem that men and women need a common motivation, namely a common adversary, to organize and act together in the vacuum. Such a motivation seemed to have ceased to exist or have yet to be found. 

The need for enemies seems to be a common historical factor. Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one invented for the purpose.

Democracy will be made to seem responsible for the lagging economy, the scarcity and uncertainties. 

The very concept of democracy could then be brought into question and allow for the seizure of power".






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