sperm Archives - The Automatic Earth

This may be the most articulate response I’ve ever heard to this question. pic.twitter.com/ndPULk09pT
— Today in History (@TodayinHistory) May 6, 2026

Will never get tired of sharing this.

Never forget that @SecRubio called the Iran situation 11 years ago.

He analysed it and predicted it.

Like a play-by-play, to a tee.
The accuracy is absolutely mind-blowing.

It’s worth sharing again, because there are still some people… pic.twitter.com/IdtTcmdhRE
— Kosher (@koshercockney) May 6, 2026

https://twitter.com/CRRJA5/status/2051854394044375415?s=20

Elon Musk just made every skill you’ve ever earned sound like a waste of time.

Musk: “Down the road with a Neuralink, you can just upload any subject instantly. You wanna fly a helicopter? No problem. Any given skill, you just upload it instantly.”

Not faster learning.

Not… pic.twitter.com/nncWIX4Naw
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) May 5, 2026

Accurate https://t.co/Z3xsCeDHXk
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2026

“The sea blockade is a much more serious threat than even war.. ”

• ‘Fate Of Iran Refineries Now At Risk’ As US Blockade Begins To Bite (ZH)

An Iranian energy official just conceded something in a surprise admission that the US naval blockade has begun to bite the Islamic Republic’s oil industry. According to new reporting in the NY Times: The blockade has halted Iran’s oil exports, choking off crucial revenues, and the country risks running out of places to store its oil. It is also affecting the import of other goods, forcing Iran to seek alternative routes through neighboring countries and its smaller ports on the Caspian Sea. And the economic pain inside Iran, already dire before the war, is becoming much worse.

“The sea blockade is a much more serious threat than even war, and the current stalemate must be broken because the export of our oil and energy and the fate of our refineries is now at risk,” said Hamid Hosseini, an expert on Iran’s oil sector who serves on the energy committee of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, in an interview from Tehran.This as Kpler has stated based on its data that since the US blockade took effect on April 13, no Iranian oil-laden tankers have been able to exit the strait.
“The bottom line is that Iran could run out of storage space in about 25 to 30 days if the blockade is not lifted, according to Homayoun Falakshahi, Kpler’s head of oil analysis,” continues the Wednesday report. “Other experts have given different estimates ranging from a few weeks to a month or more.” Last month we offered the following, saying a likely 15 days – probably followed with a few weeks left on the clock before the Iranians run out of storage space… As for the current Trump blockade strategy, another analyst told the Times, “The blockade really is about putting a financial deadline on the Islamic Republic’s head.”
US Jet Fires On Iranian Tanker Trying To Pass
So much for that ceasefire and alleged ‘pause’ in US naval blockade actions, as things just took another escalatory turn. In this case, a rare live fire incident unfolded Wednesday in Gulf waters as a US jet launched from the Lincoln carrier fired on and possibly disabled an Iranian-flagged tanker, per the officials US Central Command statement: U.S. forces operating in the Gulf of Oman enforced blockade measures by disabling an Iranian-flagged unladen oil tanker attempting to sail toward an Iranian port at 9 a.m. ET, May 6. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces observed M/T Hasna as it transited international waters enroute to an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman. American forces issued multiple warnings and informed the Iranian-flagged vessel it was in violation of the U.S. blockade.
After Hasna’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings, U.S. forces disabled the tanker’s rudder by firing several rounds from the 20mm cannon gun of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet launched from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72). Hasna is no longer transiting to Iran. The Pentagon/CENTCOM statement then emphasized, “The U.S. blockade against ships attempting to enter or depart Iranian ports remains in full effect. CENTCOM forces continue to act deliberately and professionally to ensure compliance.” Tehran’s response to this will be interesting, and follows prior alleged attacks this week on the UAE.

Don’t fall for those talks. After a month you’ll be right back where you started.

• ‘Framework’ Still Being Hammered Out For ‘Monthlong’ US, Iran Talks (ZH)

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has said that Iran’s response to the United States has not yet been presented to mediator Pakistan, as the WSJ reports that the US and Iranian sides are currently trying to hammer out a one-page memorandum of understanding which features 14-points. This would “lay out a framework” – the report says, for a “monthlong period of talks to end the war.” Given that agreement cannot even be found on the ‘framework’ for future talks, it seems the process is not very advanced at all – but is perhaps still back at square one, with headlines in the US way out front, and likely overly optimistic.

CNN citing the White House: “The White House received positive feedback from Pakistani mediators on Tuesday that the Iranians were progressing toward a compromise.” And more from WSJ: Iran’s mission to the UN said that “the only viable solution in the Strait of Hormuz is clear: a permanent end to the war, the lifting of the maritime blockade, and the restoration of normal passage.”
Key Timing of Wang-Araghchi Meeting in Beijing
During Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi’s visit to Beijing on Wednesday, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi pushed for the rapid reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a halt to the fighting. Araghchi echoed the urgency, saying, “Currently, it is possible to resolve the issue of reopening the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible.” Wang called for a “comprehensive ceasefire” and stressed that “the international community shares a common concern for restoring normal and safe passage through the Strait,” urging swift action.
The coordinated messaging reflects shared economic and strategic interests, especially as US naval actions have disrupted Iranian oil flows to China. Wang also signaled support for Tehran’s position, stating China “appreciates Iran’s pledge to not develop nuclear weapons,” while Iran continues to insist its nuclear program is peaceful and maintains its right to uranium enrichment as a matter of sovereignty. Wang reinforced Beijing’s stance by warning that “a comprehensive ceasefire brooks no delay” and that negotiations must continue, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called on China to pressure Iran to ease its blockade of the strait.
Alarmed Reaction from Israel
An Israeli official cited in Times of Israel said Israel did not know that President Trump was close to a deal with Iran to end the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even as global headlines pointed to progress. The official said Israel had been preparing for escalation, reflecting recent reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was waiting for US approval to resume its aerial campaign following 38 days of strikes under Operation Epic Fury.
US messaging has shifted rapidly. with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday having announced the end of Operation Epic Fury and a pivot to Project Freedom focused on reopening Hormuz, while Trump later declared a pause to allow negotiations. The mixed signals from Washington created confusion as diplomacy and military positioning unfolded simultaneously. Both Iran and Israel signaled readiness to escalate despite the diplomatic push. Iran warned its “finger is on the trigger,” while Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said forces have multiple targets prepared inside Iran and remain on high alert. He emphasized ongoing coordination with US forces and readiness to resume a broad campaign if fighting restarts.
More Official Iran Denials: Too Much ‘Speculation’
The latest response out of Tehran via Tasnim: “Despite claims by US media that Iran and the US are close to a final one-page agreement to end the war, Iran has not yet given an official response to the Americans’ final text, which contains some unacceptable clauses.” And separately Iran’s ISNA calls parts of the Axios report “speculation” – also reiterating the country has rejected some recent US proposals, as they are “unrealistic”. However, an Iranian spokesperson has said that Iran is indeed “reviewing the US proposal to end the war.”
Trump Admits: ‘Too Soon’
And now a bit of rapid narrative reversal, coming from President Trump himself, after once again a likely premature early morning Axios report with overly optimistic language. Trump’s fresh words are via the NY Post: President Donald Trump said it’s “too soon” to plan peace talks with Iran despite reports of a near deal, downplaying prospects of imminent negotiations in Pakistan. He warned that if Iran accepts terms, hostilities could end and the Strait of Hormuz reopen—but failure to agree would trigger intensified military action.
Indeed the Iranian reaction issued via media reports also suggests this is the case, that all the talk of an agreement being close is premature, and there remains immense hurdles and a long way to go. Axios’ Barak Ravid still insists that “the sources said this was the closest the parties had been to an agreement since the war began.”

“..if Tehran doesn’t agree then “the bombing starts” and it will be at a “much higher level and intensity than it was before”.

• Iran Spox Blasts ‘Unrealistic’ White House ‘Wish List’ To End War (ZH)

And now a bit of rapid narrative reversal, coming from President Trump himself, after once again a likely premature early morning Axios report with overly optimistic language. Trump’s fresh words are via the NY Post: President Donald Trump said it’s “too soon” to plan peace talks with Iran despite reports of a near deal, downplaying prospects of imminent negotiations in Pakistan. He warned that if Iran accepts terms, hostilities could end and the Strait of Hormuz reopen—but failure to agree would trigger intensified military action.

Indeed the Iranian reaction issued via media reports also suggests this is the case, that all the talk of an agreement being close is premature, and there remains immense hurdles and a long way to go. Axios’ Barak Ravid still insists that “the sources said this was the closest the parties had been to an agreement since the war began.”
Initial Word From Tehran: Doesn’t Reflect Reality
Iranian initial reaction through its media: “What US media outlets are publishing about the details of the negotiations does not reflect the reality of what is happening, according to AI Araby citing Iranian Sources.” “Progress has been made in talks with Washington through Pakistan, but it has not yet reached a level that would lead to an agreement,” the statement says. The Iranians are also clearly sticking by their approach which says the nuclear issue is a non-starter and that talks must focus on opening Hormuz and finding a final end to the conflict. “The negotiations are focused on ending the war, not the nuclear issue,” the statement in Al Araby continues.
And then the final criticism of Washington’s approach: “The negotiations are still facing the intransigent American approach and excessive demands.” And further, this: Ebrahim Rezaei dismissed U.S. demands as unrealistic, saying Washington won’t gain through conflict what it failed to secure in talks. He added Iran is ready to act and warned of a severe, regret-inducing response to any provocation. Here is the full statement from the Iranian Spokesperson of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission (via machine translation):

Trump Issues Carrot & Stick
The below is a fresh Trump Truth Social Post on Wednesday morning, warning the Iranians that the Hormuz Strait must be “open to all”. However, the president continues, if Tehran doesn’t agree then “the bombing starts” and it will be at a “much higher level and intensity than it was before”.

All of this has followed an awkward 24 hours of drastically different signals coming from various top officials of the US administration.

Marco Rubio says the goal of the war in Iran is now to restore it "back to the way it was" before Trump started the war in Iran pic.twitter.com/G1E9qyxMc4
— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) May 5, 2026

Iran was long screwed over by Russia while it itself screwed over US and Israel?

• Inside The Moscow Meeting That Laid Bare Iran’s Weak Hand (Watkins)

Iran has a long history of being screwed over by Russia, and last week’s meeting in Moscow between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Russian President Vladimir Putin over the U.S.–Israel–Iran war suggests nothing in that dynamic is about to change, according to extremely well-placed sources on both sides who spoke exclusively to OilPrice.com over the weekend. On the one hand, Tehran’s perennially baseless optimism that “this time will be different” was on full display in Araghchi’s excited praise for the marvels of the two countries’ so called ‘strategic relationship’.

On the other hand, Moscow responded with all the warmth of an international telephone operator: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said only that Russia stands ready to offer “goodwill or mediation services”, with no indication of any upgrade to the relationship service package. It fits so neatly into the familiar pattern of this abusive relationship that one wonders whether social services should be called. Or perhaps Moscow’s disinterest is merely an act — a way of masking the deep and broad assistance from Tehran that it so clearly craves?
The theoretical basis of this relationship is the 20-year comprehensive cooperation deal between Iran and Russia — formally titled The Treaty on the Basis of Mutual Relations and Principles of Cooperation between Iran and Russia — approved by Iran’s late Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, on 18 January 2024, as I exclusively reported in OilPrice.com at the time. It replaced the 10-year deal signed in March 2001 (extended twice by five years) and was expanded in duration, scope and scale, particularly in the defence and energy sectors.
In several respects, the new deal complemented key elements of the all-encompassing Iran-China 25-Year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement, first revealed anywhere in the world in my 3 September 2019 article and analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. The similarities were deliberate, designed to make the division of the key strategic assets most coveted by Moscow and Beijing easier to manage in practice. Related: China Orders Refiners to Ignore U.S. Sanctions on Key Iranian Oil Buyers
As with much of Russia’s foreign policy dealings, the devil was in the details. As a sign of how things would pan out for Tehran in the rest of the document, Russia stood to benefit at Iran’s expense in the key energy sector to begin with. The deal gave Russia the first right of extraction in the Iranian section of the Caspian Sea, including the potentially huge Chalous field. This came on top of Russia’s startlingly brazen theft in 2019 of at least US$3.2 trillion in revenues from Iran through the lost value of energy products across their shared Caspian assets going forward.
The same right of first extraction for Russia was also applied in the new 20-year deal to several of Iran’s major oil and gas fields in the Khorramshahr and nearby Ilam provinces that border Iraq, which China had not already prioritised for its own needs. Several of these sites had the broader financial and geopolitical benefits attached to their being shared fields with Iraq. This status allowed the effective free movement of Iranian oil disguised as Iraqi oil, and extended Tehran’s influence over Baghdad through its political, economic, and military proxies. By extension, it did the same for Moscow and Beijing, which used this as a springboard to further project their influence across the Iran-dominated Shia Crescent of Power.
This powerbase in Iran and Iraq had also been central to Russia’s longstanding plan to build a ‘land bridge’ to the Mediterranean Sea coast of another of its key global assets at the time — Syria. This would enable Moscow to exponentially increase weapons delivery into southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights area of Syria to be used in attacks on Israel. The core aim of this policy was to provoke a conflict in the Middle East that would draw in the U.S. and its allies into an unwinnable war, and was seen as a natural extension of the Israel-Hamas War that had begun after the terrorist organisation’s murderous spree across Israel on 7 October 2023.
Given its centrality to Moscow’s plans, then, Iran was at that point still confident that the Kremlin would meet its other promises in the 20-year deal, despite the shenanigans surrounding the energy side of the treaty as it related to the Caspian’s oil and gas riches. “Iran had long been asking Russia for the means to defend itself better against any attacks, especially those that might come from Israel or the U.S. — in particular for the S-400 missile defence system and Sukhoi Su-34 and 35 fighter jets,” a very senior source working closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry exclusively told OilPrice.com. “But these requests have continually been subject to further conditionality by Russia, such as upgrading key airports and seaports that Moscow sees as especially useful for dual-use by its air force and navy, and which are also close to major oil and gas facilities.

“Will ICE officially become NICE? Probably not anytime soon. But the mere suggestion has Democrats tying themselves in knots ..”

• Trump Dropped an ICE Rebrand — and Democrats Are Losing It (Margolis)

Leave it to the left to have a meltdown over a single letter. Last month, President Donald Trump endorsed rebranding Immigration and Customs Enforcement as National Immigration and Customs Enforcement — NICE — and on Tuesday, the White House unveiled updated branding for the agency, complete with a new patch mockup. DHS amplified the rollout on its own X account, and the trolling was, well, quite effective. The idea didn’t originate in the Oval Office. Comedian Adam Carolla first floated it back in September.

.⁦@adamcarolla⁩ unveils his nice idea to stop Gavin Newsom and other leftists from verbally attacking ICE. pic.twitter.com/bGf1uNMuJz
— Paul Bond (@WriterPaulBond) September 26, 2025

Then in March, conservative influencer Alyssa Marie wrote on X, “I want Trump to change ICE to NICE (National Immigration and Customs Enforcement) so the media has to say NICE agents all day everyday.”Trump promptly endorsed it on Truth Social, calling it a “great idea.” Then on Tuesday came the onslaught. Trump posted what many believe to be a potential rebrand on Truth Social, which the Department of Homeland Security reposted on X.
https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/2051754837683896415
The White House also posted a patch concept.
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/2051761247779979301
Looks good, doesn’t it? Naturally, Democrats started flipping out. Because, of course, they did. And obviously, they responded in their usual “classy” way. I don’t have to tell you this isn’t what happened. Renee Good attempted to run over an ICE agent with her car, and he fired in self-defense. But facts have never been the left’s strong suit when there’s a narrative to protect. But I digress.
This all sounds great, and the reactions from the left are so worth it. But officially changing the agency’s name from ICE to NICE would require an act of Congress to amend the statute that created the agency. Still, the NICE rebrand is a perfect piece of political judo. It reframes the public conversation around an agency the left has spent years trying to demonize. Democrats want the word “ICE” to conjure fear and cruelty. Trump wants the media to be forced to say “NICE agents” every single day, in every single broadcast. It’s hard to run a “Defund NICE” campaign with a straight face. The left knows it, which is exactly why they’re reacting with such theatrical fury.
Will ICE officially become NICE? Probably not anytime soon. But the mere suggestion has Democrats tying themselves in knots, and that alone is worth it. Sometimes the point of a move isn’t to execute it — it’s to watch your opponents trip over themselves reacting to it. On that score, this one is already a win. So, yeah, I’m all for it. Frankly, I’m surprised it wasn’t called NICE to begin with. Clearly, Carolla was onto something, and I really hope we see it happen… if for no other reason than to see Democrats lose it.

“The most effective way to get the best outcome is to approach and enlist the smart ones from outside government to come and assist. Patel was always an insider.”

• Kash Patel Outlines Secret Room in FBI Headquarters (CTH)

My opinion on our current FBI Director is the same as it was the day his nomination was announced. The best, the most competent, the smartest, the most insightful and stable thinking people do not originate on a track from inside government work. The most effective way to get the best outcome is to approach and enlist the smart ones from outside government to come and assist. Patel was always an insider.

The FBI is an institution built upon corruption and fraud. Unfortunately, neither President Trump, nor the American people, will ever get the vindication and accountability he/we deserve until Kash Patel is no longer the one in charge of delivering it. It’s just that painfully simple. Trying to reform a corrupt system while maintaining the structures that enabled the corruption leads to endless discussions and ‘trust me bro’ delays.
In this interview FBI Director Kash Patel sits down with Sean Hannity to discuss current and prior events within the FBI. Patel’s primary objective is the performance; the presentation of what he thinks will endear him to President Trump the most. This is not effectiveness; the outcome is the illusion of leadership.

“..going against Trump in a primary means ending up “in the grinder..”

• Trump Is Purging RINOs, and the Left Is Panicking (Margolis)

Tuesday night’s Indiana Republican State Senate primary turned into a political slaughterhouse. Five of seven GOP incumbents who’d stonewalled efforts to redistrict the state in Republicans’ favor went down in flames. There was nothing subtle about the message from MAGA voters. They want strong Republicans who will fight the Democrats, not be weak, useful idiots for the left. And if there’s anything that Donald Trump has taught the GOP, it’s how to be a fighter. “He’s the boss of the party,” Scott Jennings said of Trump on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees. “He calls the shots in the Republican Party, and if you go against that, he will pour his wrath out upon you, and it doesn’t typically turn out well.”

That’s not spin. That’s just reality at this point. Jennings invoked Harry Enten’s well-worn observation that going against Trump in a primary means ending up “in the grinder,” and Indiana delivered a fresh case study. And weak-kneed Republicans should take note, because the carnage won’t stop in Indiana. Jennings immediately pointed to what comes next: Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District in a couple of weeks, where Thomas Massie — arguably the single biggest thorn in Trump’s side in the entire House — is staring down a well-funded primary challenge.
“If you look at what happened in Indiana tonight, and you’re Thomas Massie tonight, or you’re anybody else in a primary right now where Trump’s on the other side of you, you’ve got to be thinking, this is a bad night for me,” Jennings said. The money’s there. The will is there. The precedent is being set, one primary at a time. Then Van Jones opened his mouth. Jones went full pearl-clutching, calling Trump a “petty little punching-down bully” and complaining that the president couldn’t find the Epstein files or lower gas prices but somehow found time to meddle in statesenate races.
“I would be embarrassed if I were the President of the United States with the level of crisis that we have, that this is his most important objective and the only thing he’s gotten right, apparently, in the past six months,” Jones said. He topped it off with a little lecture about sovereignty and kings: “We don’t have a king.” Really? He’s playing the King Card? Of course, Jennings calmly torched Jones’s whole argument with one question: “Do you think that those sorts of rules apply to, say, Barack Obama when he engages in the Virginia redistricting referendum?”Jones tried to wiggle out of it. “He didn’t — he got involved in a ballot measure,” Jones said. “He didn’t go poking and picking on individual dog catchers and everybody else.”
And Barack Obama never endorsed Democrats in competitive primaries before? Give me a break. What a dumb argument to make. So, obviously, Jennings wasn’t buying it. “Well, he was picking on the Republican congressman who represented their constituents.” And that was that. Jones tried to lecture about the sanctity of political prerogatives, even apparently forgetting that presidents from both parties have long used their influence to shape their parties, be it by endorsing or recruiting candidates, raising money, cutting ads, etc. What Jones is really upset about here is that Trump has succeeded.

It’s too easy to be corrupt in the US. Because the people paid to prevent this were all focused on getting Trump.

• FBI Raids Virginia Senate President’s Office (Salgado)

A top Virginia Democrat and ally of radical Gov. Abigail Spanberger is suddenly in the spotlight as the FBI raids her office amid a reported corruption investigation. Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin posted on X May 6 that Fox was “on scene in Portsmouth, VA where the FBI is raiding the office of Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore L[.] Louise Lucas, a Democrat and close ally of VA Governor Spanberger. Fed law enforcement sources tell FOX this is in connection to a major corruption probe, and the FBI is serving multiple search warrants, approved by a federal judge, at her office and a next door cannabis dispensary. More to come with correspondent @AlexHoganTV, who reports that Lucas just showed up on scene as the FBI searches her office.”

Fox’s foreign correspondent Alex Hogan posted the video below:

The FBI is currently carrying out a raid at the office of Senator Louise Lucas in Portsmouth, VA. Here at this nearby cannabis dispensary, at least three people were taken into custody. Federal law enforcement say they’re conducting “court authorized criminal search warrants”. pic.twitter.com/UL2c7yAk0L
— Alex Hogan (@AlexHoganTV) May 6, 2026

Ironically, like so many other Democrats, Lucas previously lectured that “no one is above the law” when gloating over the March 2023 Manhattan grand jury indictment of Donald Trump. Now Trump is back in the White House, and his FBI is raiding Lucas’s office.

Louise Lucas just learned no one is above the law! https://t.co/9n6H4zlV5f pic.twitter.com/TZZkxtH6pY
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 6, 2026

It is not clear if this investigation will involve Spanberger directly at all, or only indirectly, because her ally Lucas is the one under federal investigation.
Notably, however, Spanberger also arguably violates federal law on a regular basis whenever she enforces sanctuary policies for illegal aliens. For instance, the Department of Homeland Security just rearrested Guatemalan illegal alien and pedophile Walvin Victor Hugo Garcia after Spanberger and her fellow Democrats defied an ICE detainer request and released Garcia. And earlier this year, after Sierra Leone criminal illegal alien Abdul Jalloh, with 30 prior arrests, stabbed a 41-year-old Virginia mom, Stephanie Minter, to death at a bus stop, Spanberger explicitly refused to hand Jalloh over to federal immigration authorities.
The reason I say this behavior potentially violates the law is that, according to 18 U.S. Code § 111, anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with” designated federal officers has committed a criminal offense. 8 U.S. Code § 1324 also states that anyone who “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law” or “conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien” violates the law. Spanberger appears to have broken both those laws, as have all officials in Virginia enforcing sanctuary policies. Maybe the Feds need to raid Spanberger next.

“In one from 2017, Brockman muses, “It’d be wrong to steal the nonprofit from [Musk] and turn it into a B-Corp without him—doing so would be pretty morally bankrupt.”

• OpenAI Co-founder Greg Brockman Defends Company’s For-Profit Pivot (ET)

In the second week of a high-profile jury trial that could have profound impact on the race for artificial intelligence, OpenAI president Greg Brockman rejected allegations that he and other co-founders betrayed the company’s philanthropic mission and illegally enriched themselves by flipping the non-profit lab into a for-profit corporation.Tesla CEO Elon Musk in 2024 sued Brockman and CEO Sam Altman, alleging they bilked him of $38 million in donations then restructured as a for-profit corporation by exclusively licensing their flagship product to Microsoft—betraying a founding mission to operate as an open-source charity that would counter the risks of profit-driven AI.

OpenAI and Microsoft deny the allegations, arguing that Musk abandoned the company in 2018 to start his own for-profit competitor, xAI, when other founders rejected his bid to take full control of the operation. “I think we’ve been very consistent on the mission,” Brockman told a federal court in Oakland. “If you look at what we’ve accomplished—currently the foundation has $150 billion worth of OpenAI equity value. That’s something we’ve built through hard blood, sweat, and tears through all this time since Elon left.” The company’s nonprofit foundation has a 27 percent stake in OpenAI’s for-profit corporation; Microsoft, which has invested more than $13 billion since 2019, owns 26 percent.
Called as an adverse witness for the plaintiff, Brockman over two days May 4–5 offered testimony outlining an alternate narrative and timeframe than the one Musk presented the week prior. Brockman also attempted to add context to what he has claimed were “cherrypicked” segments of his personal diary, unsealed during the discovery process. He often spoke in incomplete sentences, punctuated by stock phrases like, “We were solving for the mission.” Arguably, this had less zing to it than, “You can’t just steal a charity”—a phrase Musk favored in his own testimony.
‘Morally Bankrupt’ Musk’s attorney Steven Molo grilled Brockman on a series of diary entries from 2017 and 2018, a time of intense negotiations with Musk over the future structure of the company. In one from 2017, Brockman muses, “It’d be wrong to steal the nonprofit from [Musk] and turn it into a B-Corp without him—doing so would be pretty morally bankrupt.” Brockman denied this contradicted his commitment to OpenAI’s mission. “I think I meant it would actually serve the mission, but it would be hard to look at yourself in the mirror,” he told the court. Under cross-examination, he explained he was referring to the idea of voting Musk off the board of directors, which he had considered at the time.
“It had been made clear to us,” he said, “that if we didn’t come to [Musk’s] terms, he was going to start an AGI competitor.” Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is the hypothetical point at which digital intelligence reaches or surpasses human cognitive abilities and can operate autonomously. Some, including Musk, believe we have already achieved an early version of it, and that AGI advancement in the wrong hands poses the greatest existential threat to humanity. Musk testified that this threat was the express motivation for creating OpenAI as an open-source, nonprofit lab. From late 2017 to early 2018, Musk, Altman, Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever, another OpenAI co-founder and its former chief scientist, floated various ideas as they debated how to fund the project at a competitive level.
Musk, the main donor, rejected an even equity split among the four co-founders, instead proposing a deal that would give him majority stake, to be diluted as more investors joined. Brockman said he and Sutskever were willing to accept Musk being CEO and having a majority stake. “But the one thing we could not accept was to hand him unilateral total control over the AGI.” Musk was the wrong man for the job, according to Brockman. “Look, he knows rockets, he knows electric cars, he did not and I believe does not know AI,” Brockman said of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. “And Ilya and I did not think he was going to spend the time required to actually get good at it.”
Brockman alleged Musk “didn’t recognize that spark” in early language models underlying the GPT technology. “It was there, a working version, we could see the promise. … We really needed someone running the company that had that effect.” Molo pressed the witness, pointing to emails from Musk proposing a 16-person board for the new corporation, in which Musk would have a 25 percent influence. “This is the man you’re saying wanted to be the AI tyrant and have absolute and total control?” Molo probed. “He wanted a board, and conducted in a way you were not familiar with because you didn’t have the experience of corporate governance, did you?” Brockman acknowledged, “Definitely, this is something I was new to,” but maintained that there was never a real plan for Musk to relinquish control.
In a January 2018 email to Musk and others, Brockman stressed that a moral high ground was “our best tool,” and to maintain it, the company should endeavor to remain a nonprofit. “AI is going to shake up the fabric of society, and our fiduciary duty should be to humanity.” But back in November 2017, Molo pointed out that Brockman’s diary entries show he was worried about how it would look if the founders continued to say they were committed to a nonprofit while planning to convert to a for-profit. “Cannot say that we are committed to the nonprofit. Don’t wanna say that we’re committed. If three months later we’re doing b-corp then it was a lie,” Brockman wrote. “Can’t see us turning this into a for-profit without a very nasty fight.”

What is more newsworthy? That he offered sperm or that he fathered 4 children with her?

• Former OpenAI Board Member Says Elon Musk Offered Her Sperm Donations (BBC)

A former OpenAI board member has explained how her unconventional personal relationship with Elon Musk evolved into having four of his children. Shivon Zilis testified in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California for hours on Wednesday as part of Musk’s lawsuit trying to reverse OpenAI’s change to a for-profit company. The focus of Zilis’s appearance was her direct involvement in early talks with Musk around the company becoming a for-profit, but also how she worked for and became involved with Musk as she advised OpenAI. “I still really wanted to be a mum and Elon made the offer around that time and I accepted,” she said, explaining Musk in 2020 had offered to donate sperm.

Zilis and Musk attended the wedding of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino at Mar-a-Lago in February

“He was encouraging everyone around him at that time to have kids and he’d noticed I did not. He offered to make a donation,” Zilis said. Zilis has worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley for over 15 years and held executive positions at Musk’s car company, Tesla, and his neurotechnology firm Neuralink. She joined OpenAI as an advisor in 2016, not long after it was founded, a position through which she said on Wednesday is how she first met Musk. Given Zilis’s role across Musk’s companies and OpenAI, eventually becoming a director at OpenAI from 2020 to 2023, she is an important witness in the trial. OpenAI lawyers have suggested that she funnelled information about OpenAI to Musk after he in 2018 left the AI company, which he co-founded and made early donations to.
Zilis said she had a “one-off” romance with Musk about a decade ago but was not romantically involved with Musk in 2020, when Musk initially made the offer to father her children. She explained she had been struggling with certain health issues which had changed her initial plans to follow a more traditional personal path of getting married and having children with a romantic partner. Zilis’s initial plan for Musk’s role in the lives of the first two children she had by him was not necessarily as an active father, and the two had agreed to keep his paternity “strictly confidential.” Today, Musk is an active participant in the lives of his now four children with Zilis, she said, explaining that they spend a few hours a week together as a family.
Zilis said the confidentiality agreement with Musk is why she did not disclose to OpenAI’s chief executive Sam Altman that twins she gave birth to in 2021 were fathered by Musk. She told Altman that Musk was the father the following year, when she learned a Business Insider report on Musk’s paternity of the children was imminent. Nevertheless, Altman and OpenAI’s president Greg Brockman wanted to continue with Zilis on the board of the AI company. Zilis said on Wednesday that the three remained friends until at least 2023. When asked earlier this week about Zilis’ involvement with OpenAI for years after Musk had left the company, Brockman said: “We trusted her to keep the Elon conflict under control.”
Zilis left the board in March 2023 as Musk was launching xAI, an AI company developing a chatbot that is a direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.With years of history, including emails and text messages that have been made part of the case between Zilis, Altman, Brockman, and Musk, lawyers for OpenAI seized on several examples of discussions around changing the corporate structure of the AI company. Moving away from being a pure non-profit was seen as necessary as early as 2017 in order for OpenAI to grow and raise from investors many billions of dollars, according to written exchanges shown in court in which Musk was involved.
Brockman and another OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever were pushing for the company to transition to a B Corp, which is a type of for-profit entity that holds itself to a certain mission.nEmails from Zilis showed that Musk wanted more control of OpenAI, through additional board seats and even suggested that the AI company become part of Tesla, possibly as a B Corp subsidiary of the electric car company. Zilis said in a written exchange that such a move for OpenAI “solves the funding issue immediately.” Ultimately, Altman, Brockman, Sutskever could not agree on terms with Musk, in large part because they were adamant that Musk “not have control” of OpenAI’s work, according to an email from Zilis shown in court.

“Since her appointment by President Joe Biden, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has quickly developed a radical and chilling jurisprudence..”

• Three Justices Chastise Jackson for Groundless, Irresponsible Dissent (Turley)

Since her appointment by President Joe Biden, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has quickly developed a radical and chilling jurisprudence. Her often sole dissents and accusatory rhetoric have drawn not just the ire of her conservative colleagues but her liberal colleagues. This week, that tension deepened with a stinging rebuke from Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch).

At issue is the finalization of the Court’s opinion in Louisiana v. Callais, where the Court ruled 6-3 to ban racial gerrymandering. The Court reaffirmed the use of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to ban intentional racial discrimination in the design of voting districts, but effectively found many districts to be unconstitutional in their current form. There is no reason why the decision should not be finalized except for a blatantly partisan effort to protect the Democrats from losing seats in the midterm elections. After all, if these districts are unconstitutional, why should states guarantee that voters are given representatives chosen free of racial discriminatory preferences?
That question is even more confusing given the long wait for this opinion. Not only was the case reargued, but there were growing complaints about the delay in releasing the opinion. Complaints increased after a recent book allegedly reported that Justice Elena Kagan had a vocal confrontation with her colleague, former Justice Stephen Breyer, over his push to release the dissents in Dobbs after the leaking of that opinion. Breyer reportedly agreed with Chief Justice John Roberts that the conservative justices were facing increased death threats due to the delay. Kagan allegedly wanted to further delay the release.
In the Callais decision, the delay was curious since there were six solid votes for the majority and not more of a fracturing of opinions. Indeed, the majority opinion’s references to the Kagan dissent are relatively brief. Nevertheless, the delay has made it very difficult for states to make changes. A few are moving to delay their primaries or draw new maps under extremely tight calendars. Regardless of the delay, there is no cognizable or principled reason to withhold the opinion to preserve unconstitutional districts. The case has already been on the docket for an unusually long time due to a reargument.
In its one-paragraph order, the court acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s clerk normally waits 32 days after a decision to send a copy of the opinion and the judgment to the lower court. However, it noted that the defenders of the challenged districts had “not expressed any intent to ask this Court to reconsider its judgment.” Conversely, the other parties raised the need for states to address the impact of the ruling with the approaching elections.
Jackson stood alone in demanding that the unconstitutional districts be effectively preserved for the purposes of this election — guaranteeing Democratic seats in the midterm that could be lost in non-racially discriminatory districts. Neither Kagan nor Justice Sonia Sotomayor would join her in the dissent, despite dissenting from the Callais decision itself. However, it was her language again that drew the attention of her colleagues. Justice Jackson lambasted the court’s ruling “has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana.” In an Orwellian twist, Jackson suggested that others were playing politics as she sought to effectively protect unconstitutional Democratic districts. She suggested that the case exposed “a strong political undercurrent.”
In arguably the most insulting line, she lectured her colleagues that this case “unfolds in the midst of an ongoing statewide election, against the backdrop of a pitched redistricting battle among state governments that appear to be acting as proxies for their favored political parties.” She further said that, rather than avoid “the appearance of partiality,” the Court’s action “is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map.”
Justice Alito had had enough. He noted that her reliance on the 32-day period was a “trivial” objection that put form above substance since no party had asked for reconsideration. It would be waiting for 32 days for no purpose, while the other parties had stated a reasonable and pressing need to finalize the opinion. He chastised Jackson for a dissent that “lacks restraint.” He denounced the dissent as making “baseless and insulting” claims. He particularly objected to the charge that her colleagues were engaging in an unprincipled use of power” as a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”
What is even more chilling than Jackson’s jurisprudence is the fact that she is often cited as the model for Democrats seeking to pack the Court with an instant majority if they retake power. This and other Jackson dissents show why Democrats are so confident that packing the Court will yield lasting control of the government. Jackson recently told ABC News that “I have a wonderful opportunity to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues, and that’s what I try to do.” For some of her colleagues, that cathartic benefit is coming at too high a cost for the Court.

Carmakers paid through the nose to achieve … nothing.

• The EV Bust Claims Five More Victims… and They Aren’t Even EVs? (Green)

Honda’s failed bet on electric vehicles means the Japanese auto giant will have to stretch the lifecycles of five top-selling vehicles “in some cases to more than a decade,” according to a supplier memo seen by Automotive News. The company will continue selling existing versions of the Odyssey, Accord, and HR-V, as well as the Acura MDX and Integra, after writing down up to $15.8 billion worth of investments in EVs, including eliminating three new EV models for the U.S. market. Car and Driver said the 2023-issue Accord “won’t be redesigned until at least early 2030,” while “the Odyssey minivan isn’t set to be replaced until 2030, while the current HR-V SUV will see its production extended until early 2032.” The two Acura models will suffer similar delays.

It seems like just earlier this spring [It was just earlier this spring, Steve —Editor] I reported on Honda’s massive losses from betting big on EVs — with a big nudge from Big Stupid Government — but the company’s losses show up on more than just the balance sheet. That’s why models that the company actually sells and makes money on — like the aforementioned Accord — won’t see expected refreshes anytime soon. There’s this little thing called opportunity cost, which is the value of the best alternative you give up when you choose one option over another. Honda bet big on EVs, but then changing market conditions forced the company to scale back those plans to the tune of billions of dollars worth of write-downs.
Worse, however, are the updated models that would have sold in volume that the company chose not to invest in.Losing a bet this big hurts in the auto industry more than almost anywhere else, due to development times measured in years — yet vehicles are still subject to the whims of fashion. Consumers expect regular model refreshes, particularly loyal customers hoping to trade in their older car for the latest version of the same model. A two- or three-year delay means customers holding onto their current car for that much longer. Or maybe even shopping the competition.
The current version of the Odyssey minivan debuted in 2018 and hasn’t gotten anything more than a facelift in 2025. Buyers hoping to trade in for the latest and greatest have to wait another four years. Honda said in a statement, “We are not going to comment on future product plans. We are very confident and excited in our future product strategy including our previously announced plans to advance our award-winning hybrid technology to more models.” The company needed 36 words to say nothing at all.
According to Electrek, Honda’s strategy “now centers on hybrids for the near term, with affordable EVs priced under $30,000 pushed to the end of the decade. The only EV still standing in its US lineup is the Prologue, which recently saw a $7,500 price cut — a GM Ultium-based vehicle that Honda didn’t even engineer itself.” Electrek also noted that Honda completely scrapped plans for a multibillion-dollar EV plant in Canada. Don’t get me wrong, Honda makes great hybrids, and for most people looking to save money on gas, they make so much more sense than going fully electric. But hybrid versions of the company’s most-loved models that could have hit showrooms this year or next, now won’t be seen until the next decade.

‘sin at its root does not consist in the (same-sex) couple relationship, but in a lack of faith in God who desires our fulfillment.’

• Tectonic Shift In Church Framing of Homosexuality (Tim O’Brien)

Two things that non-Catholics and many Catholics don’t understand about the Catholic Church are that it’s not a democratic organization and it’s not an autocracy. In other words, as powerful as the Pope is, he cannot arbitrarily or single-handedly change doctrine and policy. At the same time, even though the church counts 1.4 billion members around the world, it is not structured to take their input into account the way representative government works in America.

Among Catholics, this confusion often pops up when the discussion turns to declining mass attendance and increases in the number of lapsed Catholics who no longer consider themselves a part of the church, even though they may have been baptized in the church. To get them back, we might argue, the church needs to allow women to be priests, or priests to get married, or to change our hard line on abortion, or to change the church’s position on LGBTQ issues. That’s not how it works, or at least, that’s not how it’s supposed to work. I know I’m going to hear from the Catholic catechism and Canon Law technicians on this oversimplification, but here goes: The church is here for Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and God Himself.
We exist to please God. God does not exist to please us. He is not our creation. We are His creation. From a purely administrative standpoint, the church has had to find ways over the past 2,000 years to function in a changing world. That is definitely not to say that the church has had to change with the times or change simply to stay relevant, but rather, it has had to stay true to itself in the context of the times. Against this backdrop, Pope Francis decided to convene a Synod of Bishops in 2021 to consider ways in which the church can be more responsive to the culture without diminishing its core doctrines and policies, and the catechism itself.
In the Catholic Church, a Synod of Bishops is a formal assembly where bishops meet to discuss subjects tied to doctrine, governance, pastoral practice, or mission. If there is any one approach the church uses to try to stay relevant, this would be a key method. Of course, there are many within the church who argue against a “synodal mentality,” where they feel that the desire to be more relevant or “accessible” can undermine the core attributes of the church itself. They feel too much weight is assigned to synods.
When this particular synod was convened, the church invited its members from around the globe to participate. “Listening sessions” were held at the most local of levels – the parishes. It’s been reported that millions of Catholics participated in this process, where the input and feedback received were fed up the food chain from the parishes to the dioceses; to the bishops at the local level; then to the “continental level,” and ultimately on to the Vatican. Out of this process emerged what the church called a “Working Document,” which then was reviewed in the Vatican before this final report was released.
And so, Study Group 9 of Pope Francis’s synod has now released its final report, and in it is included the testimonies of two homosexual men. This is included as part of the report’s “cases for listening.” In the slow-moving world of Vatican policy change, this is a tectonic shift.
What’s actually in the report
According to insiders, throughout the synodal process, the bishops looked more closely at a number of issues, including women’s ordination, the church and the internet, ecumenism, polygamy, the Catholic liturgy, and other things. But the headlines coming out of the final report are sure to center mostly on how it treated the LGBTQ issues. The synod’s final report includes that testimony where two “married” homosexual men, who say they are Catholic, described the church’s role in creating an atmosphere of “solitude, anguish, and stigma that accompany persons with same-sex attractions and their families.”
John-Henry Westen, co-founder of LifeSite, reacted to the release of the report on the X platform, saying that it “Suggests a reframing of homosexuality in the church, endorsing testimony without qualification that ‘sin at its root does not consist in the (same-sex) couple relationship, but in a lack of faith in God who desires our fulfillment.’” This is covered in the first couple of minutes in Westen’s video.
Sorry my shirt was wrinkled here, but this news is TOO IMPORTANT to miss. And please share it. https://t.co/ycP3tmbrmT
— John-Henry Westen (@JhWesten) May 5, 2026
.

https://twitter.com/GreereMedeea/status/2051772652419748146?s=20 https://twitter.com/lakemonstercl1/status/2051607526353916257?s=20

do you understand what just happened to your computer..

Google Chrome secretly downloaded a 4GB AI model onto your device. Without asking.. Without telling you..

It's called weights.bin. It lives deep in your system folders. It powers Gemini Nano – Google's on-device AI.

And… https://t.co/qKjzl8IRa9 pic.twitter.com/hnf9Z5esan
— BuBBliK (@k1rallik) May 5, 2026

850 million children, or ONE THIRD of genZ, were murdered by their own mothers

that’s about 10 times as many deaths as during World War II https://t.co/KPGEXyLLYv pic.twitter.com/tYPjEHUVcI
— vittorio (@IterIntellectus) May 5, 2026

Neuralink progress https://t.co/IJM7hZyBRR
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 7, 2026

Today marks the 24th anniversary of the assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn by a climate activist.

This clip still gives me chills every time: “The people have had enough. I stand for this country, even if it means I get slaughtered…”

Oh how different things could… pic.twitter.com/LsFxoiyJsi
— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) May 6, 2026

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

Debt Rattle June 20 2022

Jun 202022

June 20, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, coal, Donbass, Kaliningrad, Lithuania, Macron, Moderna, Pfizer, sperm, toddlers, WWIII 37 Responses »

Henri Matisse Notre-Dame, une fin d’après-midi 1902

• Boris Urges World Leaders To Hold Their Nerve For A Long War In Ukraine (DM)

• Prepare To Fight Russia In A Third World War – Britain’s Top General (DM)

• Lithuania Bans Transit Of Sanctioned Russian Goods To Kaliningrad (RFE)

• Russia’s New Rules (Luongo)

• St. Petersburg Sets The Stage For The War of Economic Corridors (Escobar)

• OSCE: Ukraine Started Shelling Donbas Nine Days Before Russian Attack (KK)

• Ukraine’s EU Accession Plan Is a Suicide Pill for Desperate EU (Jay)

• Pfizer’s mRNA Jabs “Temporarily” Impair Semen Concentration’ (Wiley)

• Pfizer Vaccine Effects On Total Motile Count In Sperm Donors (El Gato)

• FDA Unanimously Approve Covid Vaccine For 0-4 Years (HART)

• Experts Question CDC’s Approval Of Covid Vaccines For Under-5s (DM)

• Germany Turns To Coal For Electricity Amid Gas Shortage Concerns (JTN)

• Macron Faces 5 Years Of Gridlock After Stunning Parliamentary Defeat (Pol.eu)

• Australia Government Lobbying Behind The Scenes For Assange’s Freedom (SMH)

Russell Brand: “The problem with ‘following the science’ is that the science follows the money”

Russell Brand: “The problem with ‘following the science’ is that the science follows the money” pic.twitter.com/U9vQIwZqzC

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) June 18, 2022

Maersheimer

In 2016, Mearsheimer was asked what the biggest disaster in US foreign policy was. The panelist next to him said Iraq. Here’s his answer. In my business, this is called a crystal ball. pic.twitter.com/pFBnOIJ5Jm

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) June 19, 2022

He’ll do anything to divert attention from his troubles.

• Boris Urges World Leaders To Hold Their Nerve For A Long War In Ukraine (DM)

Boris Johnson has urged world leaders to hold their nerve for a long war in Ukraine, or risk the ‘greatest victory for aggression in Europe since the Second World War’. In a thinly-veiled barb at Emmanuel Macron’s pleas to ‘make nice’ with warmonger Putin, the Prime Minister has said a Russian victory in Ukraine would be ‘catastrophic’ and urged the international community to use its power to expel Moscow’s invading armies. ‘We’ve got to make it clear that we are supporting the Ukrainians in their ambitions… to expel the Russians, expel Putin’s armies, from everything that he has obtained since February 24, and make sure the Ukrainians are not encouraged to go for a bad peace, something that simply wouldn’t endure.’

Writing in The Sunday Times, Mr Johnson said: ‘Time is now the vital factor. Everything will depend on whether Ukraine can strengthen its ability to defend its soil faster than Russia can renew its capacity to attack. Our task is to enlist time on Ukraine’s side.’ The Tory leader, himself battling inflation spiralling domestic fuel prices, told allies that economic concerns should not lead to a rushed settlement in war-torn Ukraine. Allowing Russia to keep territory in Ukraine ‘would be the greatest victory for aggression in Europe since the Second World War’, Mr Johnson added. [..] Speaking after his second visit to Kyiv, Mr Johnson said: ‘It would a catastrophe if Putin won. He’d love nothing more than to say ”Let’s freeze this conflict, let’s have a ceasefire like we had back in 2014”. For him, that would be a tremendous victory. You’d have a situation in which Putin was able to consolidate his gains and then to launch another attack.

‘We’ve got to make it clear that we are supporting the Ukrainians in their ambitions… to expel the Russians, expel Putin’s armies, from everything that he has obtained since February 24, and make sure the Ukrainians are not encouraged to go for a bad peace, something that simply wouldn’t endure.’ [..] Mr Johnson told Mr Zelensky yesterday that the UK is prepared to launch a major operation to train Ukrainian armed forces, training up to 120,000 troops every 120 days to prepare them for combat against Putin’s soldiers. Mr Johnson said that it was important to prevent the Russians ‘freezing’ the conflict so they could consolidate their gains before mounting another attack.

He said the Ukrainians should be supported in their ambition to regain territory occupied by the Russian forces since they invaded in February. However, he stopped short of calling for the recovery of all the lands Ukraine had lost since 2014 – including Crimea – something Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has previously called for.

No.

• Prepare To Fight Russia In A Third World War – Britain’s Top General (DM)

Britain’s top army general has told his troops to prepare to fight and beat Putin’s armies in a European land war, it has emerged tonight. General Sir Patrick Sanders, who assumed overall command of the British Army this week, warned soldiers ‘we are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again’ as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine rocks global stability. In a tub-thumping message to British troops, he wrote: ‘I am the first Chief of the General Staff since 1941 to take command of the Army in the shadow of a land war in Europe involving a continental power… The scale of the enduring threat from Russia shows we’ve entered a new era of insecurity. ‘It is my singular duty to make our Army as lethal and effective as it can be. The time is now and the opportunity is ours to seize.’

It comes as Putin menaces NATO countries and this week taunted former Soviet states in Europe by declaring: ‘They are part of historic Russia’. Putin made the comments in response to a dramatic statement by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who sensationally declared he did not recognise the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. Tokayev, sat metres away from the brooding Russian despot at the St Petersburg Economic Forum (SPIEF) yesterday, described the DPR and LPR as ‘quasi-state territories’. ‘We don’t recognise Taiwan, Kosovo, South Ossetia or Abkhazia… we apply this principle to the quasi-state territories, which in our view, are the Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics’, the Kazakh President said in a daring defiance of Putin’s war in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian President sat quietly, considering Tokayev’s comments, before appearing to deliver a calm but quietly menacing warning. ‘What is the Soviet Union?’ Putin asked rhetorically. ‘This is historic Russia.’ He went on to paint Kazakhstan as a nation friendly to Russia, but quickly added: ‘The same thing could have happened with Ukraine, but they wouldn’t be our allies.’

Provocation, trying to make a bigger war.

• Lithuania Bans Transit Of Sanctioned Russian Goods To Kaliningrad (RFE)

Lithuania has begun a ban on the rail transit of goods subject to European Union sanctions to the Russian far-western exclave of Kaliningrad, transport authorities in the Baltic nation said on June 18. The EU sanctions list includes coal, metals, construction materials, and advanced technology. Anton Alikhanov, the governor of the Russian oblast, said the ban would cover around 50 percent of the items that Kaliningrad imports. Alikhanov said the region, which has an ice-free port on the Baltic Sea, will call on Russian federal authorities to take tit-for-tat measures against the EU country for imposing the ban. He said he would also seek to have more goods sent by ship to the oblast.

The cargo unit of Lithuania’s state railways service set out details of the ban in a letter to clients following “clarification” from the European Commission on the mechanism for applying the sanctions. Previously, Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Mantas Adomenas said the ministry was waiting for “clarification from the European Commission on applying European sanctions to Kaliningrad cargo transit.” The commission stated that sanctioned goods and cargo should still be prohibited even if they travel from one part of Russia to another but through EU territory. [..] Russia’s Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, became part of the Soviet Union after World War II. It has a population of about 430,000 people and hosts the headquarters of Russia’s Baltic sea fleet.

Gonzalo Lira – A message for Americans

“..perpetuate old colonialist behavior well past its use-by date..”

• Russia’s New Rules (Luongo)

Russia is done with the West. The divorce is nearly complete. In the past few days we’ve heard from all major Russian leaders the same thing, “The West will play by our rules now.” You can decide for yourselves whether Russia is writing checks they can’t cash, but in the words of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov telling the BBC bluntly, “We do not care about the eyes of the West.” Lavrov has always been the soul of politeness and discretion when dealing with European media. His open hostility towards his BBC interviewer was not only palpable, it was hard to argue with. He followed that up with: “I don’t think there’s even room for maneuver left anymore,” Lavrov replied. “Because both [Prime Minister Boris] Johnson and [Foreign Secretary Liz] Truss say publicly: ’We must defeat Russia, we must bring Russia to its knees. Go on, then, do it.”

Russia’s leadership never talks in such openly blunt terms. It’s almost like Lavrov was channeling comedian Dennis Miller who used to say, “Feeling froggy, take that leap.” See where it gets you. Russia knows it has the West on the ropes. We need what they produce and now they are determined to set the rules on who gets them and for what price. It knows that European leaders are puppets with Klaus Schwab’s hand up their asses. And it knows Davos has zero leverage over Russia’s actions from here on out. Which brings me to the statements linked above by Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, speaking at a panel at the St. Petersburg Economic Investment Forum (SPEIF) who just put the situation in the starkest terms there is.

“The game of nominal value of money is over, as this system does not allow to control the supply of resources. …Our product, our rules. We don’t play by the rules we didn’t create.” Miller’s statement should be thought of as a statement of principle across all theatres of operation for Russia. This doesn’t just apply to natural gas or oil. This is everything, all of Russia’s dealings with the West from here on out will be on its terms not the West’s. This is clearly the biggest geopolitical middle finger in the post WWII period. Miller is clearly laying out the rules for a new, commodity-centric monetary system, one based on what Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Poszar called ‘outside money’ — commodities, gold, even bitcoin — rather than the West’s egregious use of ‘inside money’ — debt-based fiat and credit — to perpetuate old colonialist behavior well past its use-by date.

Much more here from Pepe. Do read.

• St. Petersburg Sets The Stage For The War of Economic Corridors (Escobar)

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum has been configured for years now as absolutely essential to understand the evolving dynamics and the trials and tribulations of Eurasia integration. St. Petersburg in 2022 is even more crucial as it directly connects to three simultaneous developments I had previously outlined, in no particular order: First, the coming of the “new G8” – four BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China), plus Iran, Indonesia, Turkey and Mexico, whose GDP per purchasing parity power (PPP) already dwarfs the old, western-dominated G8. Second, the Chinese “Three Rings” strategy of developing geoeconomic relations with its neighbors and partners. Third, the development of BRICS+, or extended BRICS, including some members of the “new G8,” to be discussed at the upcoming summit in China.

There was hardly any doubt President Putin would be the star of St. Petersburg 2022, delivering a sharp, detailed speech to the plenary session. Among the highlights, Putin smashed the illusions of the so-called ‘golden billion’ who live in the industrialized west (only 12 percent of the global population) and the “irresponsible macroeconomic policies of the G7 countries.” The Russian president noted how “EU losses due to sanctions against Russia” could exceed $400 billion per year, and that Europe’s high energy prices – something that actually started “in the third quarter of last year” – are due to “blindly believing in renewable sources.” He also duly dismissed the west’s ‘Putin price hike’ propaganda, saying the food and energy crisis is linked to misguided western economic policies, i.e., “Russian grain and fertilizers are being sanctioned” to the detriment of the west.

In a nutshell: the west misjudged Russia’s sovereignty when sanctioning it, and now is paying a very heavy price. Chinese President Xi Jinping, addressing the forum by video, sent a message to the whole Global South. He evoked “true multilateralism,” insisting that emerging markets must have “a say in global economic management,” and called for “improved North-South and South-South dialogue.” It was up to Kazakh President Tokayev, the ruler of a deeply strategic partner of both Russia and China, to deliver the punch line in person: Eurasia integration should progress hand in hand with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC)

More intensified than started.

• OSCE: Ukraine Started Shelling Donbas Nine Days Before Russian Attack (KK)

It is important to remember that the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine started in 2014 after the Obama administration and U.S. Congress members installed a new government in Ukraine, in what the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor called “the most blatant coup in history.” In response to the U.S.-backed coup, the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the Donbas held a referendum on seceding from Ukraine, in which 96% of Luhansk and 89% of Donetsk voted for the creation of two new self-described independent republics in eastern Ukraine. Moscow said the vote reflected the “will of the people,” but the EU called the elections “illegal and illegitimate”, which quickly turned violent and descended into an all-out conflict between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatist forces of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Between 2014 and 2022 the War in Donbas killed an estimated 14,000 people, forcing millions of people to flee the region, and turning the conflict zone into one of the world’s most mine-contaminated areas. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has had observers on-the-ground monitoring the situation in Donbas since the outbreak of open conflict began in 2014. The OSCE has been the only international civilian observer mission allowed to collect information from both sides of the contact line, and its data, while incomplete, remains the best available. The OSCE observer mission provides maps in daily reports documenting the location of ceasefire violations and explosions along the contact line between the Ukrainian military and the Donbas republics.

These maps clearly show that Ukraine began artillery strikes against the Donbas republics on February 16th, 2022. In other words, Ukraine began shelling the independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk nine days before Russia announced its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. While the western corporate media remained completely silent, explosions documented by the OSCE increased from 76 on February 15th, to 316 on February 16th, to 654 on February 17th, and to 1,413 on February 18th. When you look carefully at the daily maps of these explosions, it is clear that the vast majority of explosions occurred on the Russian separatist side of the ceasefire line.

Feb 14: 174 ceasefire violations, 41 explosions
Feb 15: 153 ceasefire violations, 76 explosions
Feb 16: 509 ceasefire violations, 316 explosions
Feb 17: 870 ceasefire violations, 654 explosions
Feb 18: 1,566 ceasefire violations, 1,413 explosions
Feb 19-20: 3,231 ceasefire violations, 2,026 explosions
Feb 21: 1,927 ceasefire violations, 1,481 explosions
Feb 21: Russia recognizes independence of Donetsk and Luhansk
Feb 22: 1,710 ceasefire violations, 1,420 explosions
Feb 24: Russia launches ‘special military operation’

All 27 countries will agree? Can’t see it.

• Ukraine’s EU Accession Plan Is a Suicide Pill for Desperate EU (Jay)

It might take a decade for Ukraine to even join the EU club, but Macron and others are upbeat about Ukraine becoming an EU member state, ahead of a key vote by all 27-member states in Brussels. In reality, the grandiose, if not desperate move pushed by the French president, won’t go through as at least three member states have said already that they won’t back it. But what’s the real story behind this somewhat banal plan to make Ukraine a member of the European Union? Is there a hidden agenda? Well of course there is. It is simply that in 2028 Macron is hotly tipped to be running the EU. In this year, two top jobs will become vacant in Brussels – European Commission President and European Council of Ministers chief – and he is an obvious choice to take one of them.

Macron’s dream is that before then, France takes a leading role – if not the leading role – within the EU and that the bloc’s so-called ‘foreign policy’ is more or less run by him and his team. So what’s the link? In a nutshell, federalists like Macron dream of an EU which punches above its weight and despite the Maastricht treaty in 1992 and the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, the EU’s efforts to garner more power away from member states towards Brussels haven’t amounted to much in practical terms. On paper, the EU has a considerable amount of clout on the international circuit in terms of peacekeeping and humanitarian stuff. You know the sort of thing.

But in real terms whenever the EU wants to actually soldier ahead with something big, right at the last moment member states themselves hold back from pressing the button and block the move. This explains why only a couple of weeks into the Ukraine war, Macron himself went in person to visit Putin while the EU’s top diplo wonk, Josep incredibly-boring Borrell went to Washington to give a joint press conference with his left-wing US president. That tells you all you need to know about the EU’s real powers when it comes to the international stage. The EU’s top foreign policy chief didn’t go to Moscow as probably Putin wouldn’t have received him as, to be fair, Borrell hasn’t really much to say and no real power to do anything.

mRNA affects both men and women’s reproductive systems.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/andr.13209

• Pfizer’s mRNA Jabs “Temporarily” Impair Semen Concentration’ (Wiley)

37 semen donors from three sperm banks that provided 220 samples, were included in that retrospective longitudinal multicenter cohort study. BNT162b2 vaccination included two doses, and vaccination completion was scheduled 7 days after the second dose. The study included four phases: T0 – pre-vaccination baseline control, which encompassed 1–2 initial samples per SD; T1, T2 and T3 – short, intermediate, and long terms evaluations, respectively. Each included 1–3 semen samples per donor provided 15–45, 75-120, and over 150 days after vaccination completion, respectively. The primary endpoints were semen parameters. Three statistical analyses were conducted: 1) generalized estimated equation model; 2) first sample and 3) samples’ mean of each donor per period were compared to T0.

Repetitive measurements revealed -15.4% sperm concentration decrease on T2 (CI -25.5%–3.9%, p = 0.01) leading to total motile count 22.1% reduction (CI -35% – -6.6%, p = 0.007) compared to T0. Similarly, analysis of first semen sample only and samples’ mean per donor resulted in concentration and TMC reductions on T2 compared to T0 – median decline of 12 million/ml and 31 million motile spermatozoa, respectively (p = 0.02 and 0.002 respectively) on first sample evaluation and median decline of 9.5◊106 and 27.3 million motile spermatozoa (p = 0.004 and 0.003, respectively) on samples’ mean examination. T3 evaluation demonstrated overall recovery. Semen volume and sperm motility were not impaired.

El Gato’s take on the study above.

• Pfizer Vaccine Effects On Total Motile Count In Sperm Donors (El Gato)

these mRNA drugs are broadly systemic and concentrate in (amongst others) reproductive organs and effects on menstrual cycles are widely documented. In light of this quite worrying fact (especially with a compound carrying high CG enrichment relative to high virus and the attendant risks thereof) it has been surprising to me that there have no been more studies on this topic. But a few are starting to emerge. this israeli study was published 2 days ago: and the results are, well, nuts. (sorry). There was strong a priori reason to suspect effects, especially in light of the higher and more persistent prevalence of vaccine induced S proteins vs natural infection and the CG enrichment issued mentioned above.

“Over the first pandemic months, there was insufficient data regarding the possible impact of Covid-19 on human reproduction. Yet, it was clear it employs the Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor for cellular entry. Various testicular cells including Leydig, Sertoli, spermatogonia and spermatozoa express ACE2 and related proteases resulting with viral fusion. Cytokine storm-induced dysfunction, autophagy regulation and damaged blood-testis barrier were also suggested as possible pathogenic mechanism for testicular damage. Clinical reports of orchitis, supported by histological findings, further emphasized testicular involvement. Therefore, detrimental impact on both spermatogenesis and testosterone production 10 seem an obvious outcome they evaluated donors from 3 sperm banks over a longitudinal period commencing before pfizer vaccine and following up after.”

“Conclusions: Systemic immune response after BNT162b2 vaccine is a reasonable cause for transient semen concentration and TMC decline. Long-term prognosis remains good”. But i am left wondering about these claims and fear they may provide an example of the sort of “nerf or refute your own findings in the abstract so that we can publish this without massive controversy” behavior that has become all too common in medical and scientific journals who withhold peer review from those whose findings look too worrying if stated plainly. (but that will often let such data out if buried deep in supplements and appendixes).

I’m struggling to see how one could call this “recovery.” Post day 150, sperm concentration was -15.9% vs baseline, lower even than in the 75-120 day period. Average time post vaxx for T3 collection was 174 +/- 26.8 days so we’re talking about 6 months post vaxx with NO recovery in sperm concentration. Total motile count was slightly recovered from T2, but was still down 19.4% vs baseline, seeming to make up somewhat in volume what is lost in concentration.

Cabal.

• FDA Unanimously Approve Covid Vaccine For 0-4 Years (HART)

The FDA met on 15th June and despite all the evidence of non-efficacy from the infant Pfizer vaccine and the still total lack of data on long-term harms, they voted to go ahead. If the last eighteen months are anything to go by, the MHRA will follow soon, followed after a respectable few weeks by the JCVI. Indeed, vaccination for this age-group is already listed for JCVI discussion. Before the UK regulators make any decision, they would do well to read a detailed letter to the FDA from Senator Robert F Kennedy.

It was depressing that in the FDA open meeting, none of the members pointed out that 2 months follow-up is totally inadequate for assessing safety, nor questioned the use of an antibody level as a measure of success. No specific level of antibody exists which provides protection against covid so how can this be used as a useful measure? For young children, much of their reduced risk from covid arises from their superior innate immunity. In the presentation to the FDA, Pfizer presented evidence that the only antibodies produced in the children were to the Wuhan spike with no detectable antibodies to the Omicron spike. Moderna was also authorised for children at the same meeting, despite several countries having dropped it for all under 30s. Their lengthy document (189 pages of single-spaced typing) was only sent to members two working days ahead of the meeting.

But what of the Pfizer data on which the decision was apparently based? The Pfizer submission must be the most extreme case of data manipulation and bad science ever presented to the FDA. The study was approved on the basis of 4,500 participants but 3,000 of them did not make it to the end of the trial. That alone is enough to make the findings null and void. There are three other measures that were used to assess efficacy: total covid, ‘severe’ covid and hospitalisations. The researchers found that there were 30% more covid cases in the vaccine arm in the three weeks after first dose, so they ignored that data. They also ignored the data after the second dose where there was no benefit. They then ignored a full week after the third dose too.

In total 97% of the covid cases in the trial were ignored. Finally, they focused on 7 cases in the placebo arm more than a week after vaccination and 3 in the vaccine arm and on the basis of those tiny numbers over that very short period, they claimed efficacy. Pfizer described this issue thus: “Vaccine efficacy post Dose 3 cannot be precisely estimated due to the limited number of cases accrued during blinded follow-up, as reflected in the wide confidence intervals associated with the estimates.”

“Pfizer study used just THREE children to prove it works..”

• Experts Question CDC’s Approval Of Covid Vaccines For Under-5s (DM)

In the wake of the CDC’s approval of Pfizer and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine for babies as young as six months, at least one expert has questioned the move. Dr. Sarah Long, an infectious diseases expert at the Drexel University College of Medicine, told the New York Times: ‘We should just assume that we don’t have efficacy data.’ That comes off the back of Pfizer’s own reporting that said their statements of 80% effectiveness in children under five was based on the responses of just three children. Those children were part of a group of ten but seven were given a placebo. And there are also concerns about the Moderna shot, which is only between 37 per cent and 51 per cent effective, depending on the age of the child receiving it.

According to the Times report, the CDC noted in their meeting this past Friday on whether or not to approve the vaccines that Pfizer’s metric was unreliable. Dr. Long said that despite this she was ‘comfortable enough’ in approving the vaccines based on other data. Both Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines were shown to have a success rate of around 95% in adults. However in Moderna’s case, that number is just 37% in children aged two through five. The shot is effective in 51 per cent of children aged between six months and 23 months. Earlier in June 2022, FDA advisors met to discuss new vaccines to deal with new mutations of Covid-19. Public health authorities have expressed a worry that a new mutation in the latter part of the year, could undermine vaccines, reports CNBC.

Coming full circle.

• Germany Turns To Coal For Electricity Amid Gas Shortage Concerns (JTN)

Germany plans on limiting the use of natural gas and increasing the use of coal to generate electricity over concerns about a possible gas shortage as Russia cuts supplies, according to German Economy Minister Robert Habeck. “That’s bitter, but it’s simply necessary in this situation to lower gas usage,” Habeck, an environmentalist Green party member, said, the Associated Press reported. Russia’s majority state-owned Gazprom announced plans last week to sharply reduce gas to the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Although the company cited technical reasons, Haebeck said the move appeared political. Germany has been scaling back gas imports because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

The nation was attempting to phase out coal-generated power. Germany is set to shut down its last coal-fired power plant no later than 2038, The German government is asking citizens to reduce their energy use due to the supply situation. The European country is hoping to fill its gas storage facilities to 90% capacity by this fall in order to ensure heat throughout the winter. The facilities are currently at less than 60% capacity.

“Macron’s Ensemble coalition is on track to win 245 seats, down from 345 in the outgoing chamber..”

• Macron Faces 5 Years Of Gridlock After Stunning Parliamentary Defeat (Pol.eu)

French President Emmanuel Macron is set to face a potentially tumultuous five years of deadlock after his centrist alliance fell short of an absolute majority in a parliamentary runoff on Sunday, just weeks after he was reelected to the Elysée. Voters massively came out in support of the far-right National Rally and the left-wing coalition NUPES, depriving Macron of a ruling majority. With almost all votes counted, Macron’s Ensemble coalition is on track to win 245 seats, down from 345 in the outgoing chamber. NUPES, led by the far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon is set to win 141 seats, while Marine Le Pen’s National Rally will likely walk away with 89 seats. The runoff vote determines the composition of the National Assembly, the parliament’s lower chamber.

In the first round of voting last Sunday, Macron’s coalition of parties was neck and neck with the NUPES alliance, sparking concern among some in Macron’s camp that the French president’s popularity was sharply in decline. On Sunday, Macron’s supporters were left reeling after several party big guns, including the speaker of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand and Christophe Castaner, Macron’s party whip in the outgoing chamber, lost their seats. Health Minister Brigitte Bourguignon and Environment Minister Amélie de Montchalin also lost their seats — which will likely force their resignations, as has been convention since the Sarkozy era. The newly appointed Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who won her seat in Normandy with a slim majority, said Ensemble would work to broaden its support in parliament and build a “majority of action.”

“in the end the Americans can’t say no [to his release], given that President Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning for exposing the very war crime that Assange went on to publicise worldwide”

• Australia Government Lobbying Behind The Scenes For Assange’s Freedom (SMH)

The federal government is lobbying US counterparts behind the scenes to secure the freedom of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, after the United Kingdom’s decision to approve his extradition to the United States. The Trump administration brought charges against Assange under the Espionage Act relating to the leaking and publication of the WikiLeaks cables a decade ago. The UK Home Office announced late on Friday (AEST) that “after consideration by both the Magistrates Court and High Court, the extradition of Julian Assange to the US was ordered”. “In this case, the UK courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust or an abuse of process to extradite Mr Assange. “Nor have they found that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights, including his right to a fair trial and to freedom of expression, and that whilst in the US he will be treated appropriately, including in relation to his health.”

Assange’s legal team has 14 days to appeal the decision to the High Court and will do so while he remains in Belmarsh prison. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, while still opposition leader in December, said “enough is enough” and that it was time for Assange to be returned to Australia. Asked about Assange’s extradition on Saturday, he told The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age that he stood by the comments he made in December. At the time, Albanese said “he [Assange] has paid a big price for the publication of that information already. And I do not see what purpose is served by the ongoing pursuit of Mr Assange”. Albanese met US President Joe Biden at the Quad meeting in Tokyo in late May, days after the federal election, but there has been no indication that he raised the Assange matter with him during their meeting.

A source in the federal government, who asked not to be named so they could discuss the matter, has confirmed to The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age that Assange’s case has been raised with senior US officials. Former foreign minister Bob Carr said the discussions over Assange’s release would be “governed by sensitive, nuanced alliance diplomacy appropriate between partners”. “I trust the judgment of Prime Minister Albanese on this, given his recent statement cautioning against megaphone diplomacy and his comments last December,” he said. But Carr predicted that “in the end the Americans can’t say no [to his release], given that President Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning for exposing the very war crime that Assange went on to publicise worldwide”. “The Yank has had her sentence commuted; the Aussie faces an extradition and a cruel sentencing.

Hinton Oliver

USA approves gene based products for 6 month old babies. I discussed my thoughts with Neil Oliver ⁦@thecoastguy⁩ on ⁦@GBNEWS⁩ #covid19 #pfizer #moderna #canwetalkaboutit pic.twitter.com/qFLkjwSH36

— Dr Anthony Hinton GETTR @DrTonyHinton (@TonyHinton2016) June 19, 2022

Sound On

Been watching this on repeat this weekend – definitely have the sound on pic.twitter.com/VgU6Z4gsUp

— Saman Shad (@muminprogress) June 19, 2022

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Debt Rattle March 20 2021

Mar 202021

March 20, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: Austin, Biden, BIS, Blinken, Erdogan, Fauci, PCR, Putin, sperm, vaccines 26 Responses »

Gilles Mostaert Sodom and Gomorrah 1597

• Joe Biden’s Dire Opening Chapter On The World Stage (Kimball)

• Biden And Blinken’s Unprovoked Attacks On Russia And China Backfire (Ritter)

• SecDef Austin Warns North Korea: US “Ready To Fight Tonight” (ZH)

• Moscow Snubs Biden At UN, Only Sends Junior Diplomat To Virtual Summit (RT)

• Putin Challenges Biden To Stair-Climbing Contest (BBee)

• Erdogan Says Biden Comments On Putin ‘Unacceptable’ (R.)

• Erdogan Fires Second Central Bank Chief In 4 Months (ZH)

• Fauci Claims Babies, Toddlers Need To Be Vaccinated For Herd Immunity (SN)

• Drugmakers Promise Investors They’ll Soon Hike Covid-19 Vaccine Prices

• ONS Admits Ignoring Manufacturer Instructions in PCR Testing (LDS)

• The ‘Independent’ Report Claiming Uyghur Genocide (CN)

• UK Government Borrowing Hits February Record (BBC)

• Toxic Chemicals, Plummeting Sperm Counts, Shrinking Penises (Erin Brockovich)

“I am not sure whether air-sickness bags were deployed. It was Alaska, after all, so maybe they just opened the window.”

• Joe Biden’s Dire Opening Chapter On The World Stage (Kimball)

Consider, to take a very recent example, the exchange between the United States secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Chinese director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi, known to admirers and lackeys as ‘Tiger Yang’. The venue was Anchorage, Alaska, where Messrs. Blinken and Yang, along with assorted colleagues and retainers, met for a free and frank exchange of views. On the run up to the meeting, Blinken talked tough. ‘This is an important opportunity for us to lay out in very frank terms,’ he said, ‘the many concerns we have with Beijing’s actions and behavior that are challenging the security, prosperity and values of the US and our allies.’ Very frank. It was the first high-level meeting between members of the Biden administration and their Chinese counterparts. To say that it was a public relations disaster for the US is to understate the case.

Blinken and his sidekick, Jake Sullivan, a Hillary Clinton factotum who is now national security adviser, sat down to read China the riot act. It was not a success. Blinken emitted carefully polished clichés about our ‘deep concern’ over Chinas actions with regard to Hong Kong, Taiwan and other hot spots, its bullying of various European countries, and its campaign of cyber attacks against the US. This behavior, said Blinken, consulting that great compendium of diplomatic nostrums he learned in school, threatens ‘the rules-based order that maintains global stability’. I am not sure whether air-sickness bags were deployed. It was Alaska, after all, so maybe they just opened the window. Yang, speaking through a translator, shot back: ‘You can’t blame this problem on somebody else.’ Blinken went on to say that now, under Joe Biden, the United States was ‘back’ (where did it go, Tony?) and was ‘reengaging’ with its allies on the world stage.

Here’s where that short imperative I mentioned came in. The United States, said Yang, in one of the most dismissive diplomatic rejoinders I have ever heard, does not have the ‘qualifications’ to address China ‘from a position of strength’. F, my dear Blinken, you. [..] The Anchorage outrage was not an isolated incident. On the contrary, though it is early days yet in the Biden-Harris (or Harris-Biden) administration, a pattern of contempt for America and its leaders seems to be taking hold. In the course of a ‘what-flavor-is-your-milkshake’ valen- er, interview with George ‘I <3 Hillary’ Stephanopoulos, Biden was asked if he thought Russian president Vladimir Putin was a ‘killer’. He answered yes, in response to which Putin said he wished Biden the best of health and suggested they livestream a debate. Can you imagine what that would be like?

It’s not fully impossible that they got what they wanted.

• Biden And Blinken’s Unprovoked Attacks On Russia And China Backfire (Ritter)

In attacking the moral character of Russia’s president and China’s human rights record, the Biden administration opened the door for a critical examination of America’s own troubled history.President Joe Biden has defined his administration with the mantra of “America is back,” hinting at a return to what he and his supporters believe to be the halcyon days of President Barack Obama’s two-term tenure as president, as well as a sharp departure from the policies and practices of the man who usurped Hillary Clinton’s bite at the presidential apple, Donald Trump. In an effort to “build back better,” as Biden is wont to exclaim, his administration has embraced an ambitious agenda that aggressively seeks to both promote and install America as the world’s indispensable nation.

And yet, in the span of less than 24 hours, the president and his primary foreign policy advisor, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, managed to undermine the very policies they sought to promote through a combination of narcissistic posturing and plain diplomatic incompetence. By labeling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “soulless killer,” Biden put US-Russian relations in their worst posture since the Cold War. And Blinken, during the Biden administration’s initial meeting between the US and China, managed to unleash the ire and rage of Beijing by forgoing any pretense at diplomatic norms and aggressively calling out China on a host of issues which touched upon its sovereignty. The collapse of what passed for a coordinated position of diplomatically confronting both Russia and China has left the US scrambling to navigate through the detritus of its own policy shipwreck.

[..] If Biden and Psaki believed that US-Russian relations would return to square one following Biden’s undiplomatic insult, Putin quickly put that notion to bed. “The US authorities in general seek certain relations with us but only in areas the US is interested in, and on their own terms,” Putin said. “They think that we are just like them but we aren’t. Our genetic, cultural and moral codes are different. However, we know how to protect our interests. We will work with them [the US], but only in areas we are interested in and on terms we find favorable. They will have to take it into account, despite attempts to stop our development, sanctions and insults. We will be guided by our national interests when boosting relations with all countries, including the United States,” he concluded.

The plan: Biden does Putin, Blinken does China, Austin does North Korea. Coincidence?

• SecDef Austin Warns North Korea: US “Ready To Fight Tonight” (ZH)

In an unusually blunt threat and warning even for the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that US forces are ready to “fight tonight” in comments aimed at North Korea after an angry Pyongyang denounced the resumption of joint military exercises between the US and South Korea. “Our force remains ready to fight tonight, and we continue to make progress toward the eventual transition of wartime Operational Control to a [Republic of Korea]-commanded, future Combined Forces Command,” Austin said on Thursday.

He issued the words from Seoul at the tail end of his Asia trip this week alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken and South Korean leaders. Secretary Blinken had continued his denuclearization of the peninsula message, saying, “We are committed to the denuclearization of North Korea, reducing the broader threat the DPRK poses to the United States and our allies, and improving the lives of all Koreans, including the people of North Korea who continue to suffer widespread and systematic abuses at the hands of their repressive government.”

Pyongyang on Thursday slammed what DPRK first vice foreign minister Choe Son Hui called a “lunatic” and “hostile” policy. The senior North Korean diplomat said of the question of denuclearization talks that there will be no contact with Washington “unless the US rolls back its hostile policy towards the DPRK.” She said further: “Therefore, we will disregard such an attempt of the US in the future, too.” The “new regime” in the US, she added, had only put forward a “lunatic theory of ‘threat from north Korea’ and groundless rhetoric about ‘complete denuclearisation'”. The Biden administration has reportedly been attempting to reach out to the North via various diplomatic channels since mid-February, but to no avail.

“Russia’s diplomatic mission was the only one that did not send its top figure to greet the American president.”

• Moscow Snubs Biden At UN, Only Sends Junior Diplomat To Virtual Summit (RT)

Russia was the only nation that refused to send its top UN representative to talks with US President Joe Biden on Thursday, electing instead to dispatch a junior envoy, as a diplomatic row between Moscow and Washington worsens. President Biden had invited permanent representatives from the United Nations Security Council, on which Moscow has continuous representation, to discuss his country’s “commitment to values-based global leadership.” In addition, the president called for action on crises in regions across the world, including Myanmar, Ethiopia, Syria, and Yemen. However, Dmitry Polyanskiy, second-in-command to Russia’s permanent representative, Vassily Nebenzia, confirmed on Friday that neither had attended the meeting.

Instead, he revealed, Anna Evstigneeva, one of three more junior deputies, had joined the talks with Biden in their place. She reportedly made no remarks. RIA Novosti reports that Russia’s diplomatic mission was the only one that did not send its top figure to greet the American president. The decision comes amid a week in which Biden and his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, have traded barbs in the press. In an explosive interview with ABC earlier this week, Biden was asked whether he thought Putin was a killer. “Mmm hmm, I do,” Biden replied. On Thursday, the Russian leader responded, arguing that judging other countries is often “like looking in a mirror.” “When I was a kid, when we were arguing with each other in the playground, we used to say, ‘Whatever you say [about others] is what you are yourself,’” Putin said.

“The winner of the contest will gain control of the other country.”

• Putin Challenges Biden To Stair-Climbing Contest (BBee)

Vladimir Putin has challenged Joe Biden to a contest of wits, strength, and cunning: a stair-ascending contest. The winner of the contest will gain control of the other country. “Stair-ascending contest, me and you, right now, let’s go,” said Putin as he met with the American president. “He who wins become supreme glorious leader forever of other puny weak man.” Biden agreed to the contest, though it wasn’t clear he knew who this man was or where they were. “3… 2… 1… climb!” shouted the referee before firing off a pistol. Biden got off to a rocky start as he was startled by the gunshot and scurried off in the wrong direction. Putin, meanwhile, just walked up the stairs.

Biden started gaining on him as his handlers corralled him and pointed him in the right direction, but he kept falling over and tumbling down the stairs. It all looked good for Russia until Putin had to stop a few times to sign execution papers for journalists who criticized him, squandering his lead. Finally, Biden jumped in a stair lift and started to close the gap, but it was too little, too late, and Putin emerged at the top of the 30-step staircase victorious. Well, thanks to Biden losing the stair contest, we are now part of Russia. We also just want to say that Vladimir Putin is one fine fellow and a fantastic man, and he deserved to win and we welcome him as our new leader for life.

Easy.

• Erdogan Says Biden Comments On Putin ‘Unacceptable’ (R.)

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Joe Biden’s comments about Russia’s Vladimir Putin, in which he said he thought he was a killer, were “unacceptable” and unfitting of a U.S. president. In a TV interview broadcast on Wednesday, Biden said “I do” when asked if he believed Putin was a killer, prompting U.S.-Russia ties to sink to a new low. Putin later responded that “he who said it, did it.” “Mr. Biden’s statements about Mr. Putin are not fitting of a president, and a president coming out and using such remarks against the president of a country like Russia is truly unacceptable, not something that can be stomached,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul.

“In my opinion, Mr. Putin has done what is necessary by giving a very, very smart and elegant answer,” he added. Ties between Ankara and Washington, NATO allies, have been strained over a host of issues in recent years including Turkey’s record on human rights and freedoms, its acquisition of Russian defence systems and policy differences in Syria. The United States, which along with other western allies has accused Ankara of straying from NATO and the western bloc, last year imposed sanctions on Turkey over the Russian defences. Turkey called that a “grave mistake”.

Not so easy. Erdogan still wants to control what he can’t.

• Erdogan Fires Second Central Bank Chief In 4 Months (ZH)

On Thursday, moments after the Central Bank of Turkey unexpectedly hiked rates by a whopping 200bps – double the consensus expectation – to 19% from 17%, the highest rate since the country’s panicked scramble to contain the collapse of the Turkish lira during the economic turmoil of 2018, we said that “unfortunately for Turkey – whose economy will now grind to yet another halt – it had no choice: inflation had accelerated for a fifth month in February as oil rallied and the impact of last year’s lira weakness lingered, while capital outflows soared. The upward trend fueled expectations the central bank would try to rein in prices by raising interest rates… but nobody had expected a 200 bps rate hike.”

Also in our kneejerk response to the rate hike decision, we said that the relatively new CBRT head, Agbal, “was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t: on one hand the lira was plunging angering Erdogan, so he had to stabilize it… on the other the only way to do so was by hiking rates, which would anger Erdogan even more.” We also quoted from the CBRT’s decision, noting that the bank has decided “to implement a front-loaded and strong additional monetary tightening,” explicitly stating that this “statement is guaranteed to enrage Turkey’s dictator.” Bottom line: Erdogan would be furious either way.

Finally, we quoted SocGen EM strategist Phoenix Kalen who tried to justify the rate hike with some lofty sleight of logic by saying that “in a challenging context of domestic business and political pressure against further interest rate hikes, the CBRT has stepped up to the plate and delivered a resounding home run to underline its commitment to an inflation-targeting framework.” Kalen then said that the move “will go a long way toward bolstering both retail and foreign investor confidence that the CBRT under Governor Agbal will stay engaged in addressing deterioration in inflation expectations.” While we were impressed with Kalen’s attempt to make 5-D chess out of what was basically total chaos, our take was far more cynical Maybe… or maybe it will just force Erdogan to replace yet another CBRT governor.

Two days later, our cynical view proved correct again, because shortly after midnight on Saturday, and just two days after the larger than expected rate hike, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired the country’s third central bank governor in less than two years and replaced him with a fan of lowering interest rates. Naci Agbal, Turkey’s former finance minister who was appointed central bank chief last November, was fired by Erdogan and was replaced with Sahap Kavcioglu, according to a decree published after midnight on Saturday in the Official Gazette. Agbal’s abrupt termination is a clear retaliation by Erodgan for last week’s unexpectedly big rate hike, one which does not fit within the absurd confines of “Erdoganomics” whereby lower rates are somehow needed to fight inflation.

How scary would you like it?

• Fauci Claims Babies, Toddlers Need To Be Vaccinated For Herd Immunity (SN)

Dr Anthony Fauci has claimed that in order for herd immunity against coronavirus to be reached in the US, children and even babies will have to be vaccinated. Speaking during a Senate hearing, the chief medical adviser to the Biden administration said “I think we should be careful about wedding ourselves to this concept of herd immunity because we really do not know precisely, for this particular virus, what that is.” “We don’t really know what that magical point of herd immunity is, but we do know that if we get the overwhelming population vaccinated, we’re going to be in good shape. We ultimately would like to get and have to get children into that mix,” Fauci added. Appearing later on CBS News, Fauci outlined plans to vaccinate children as young as six month old babies early next year.

On Wednesday, Fauci dismissed concerns that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines could impact children’s genetics. “We’re going to be looking at multiple aspects of safety,” Fauci told reporters, adding “There is really no biological reason at all to indicate or even predict that you would even see any modification of a genetic profile when you’re dealing with mRNA, which has no way of integrating into the genome of a cell.” Vaccine manufacturers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are both currently running tests of their mRNA vaccines in children. Moderna has also revealed that it has a study underway in children under 12 that will eventually include those as young as six month old babies. CDC figures show that of almost 400,000 US deaths counted as from COVID-19, just 93 were children 4-years-old and younger.

“As this shifts from pandemic to endemic, we think there’s an opportunity here for us..”

• Drugmakers Promise Investors They’ll Soon Hike Covid-19 Vaccine Prices (IC)

THE U.S. pharmaceutical firms behind the approved coronavirus vaccines — Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer — have quietly touted plans to raise prices on coronavirus vaccines in the near future and to capitalize on the virus’s lasting presence. While the companies have enjoyed a boost in goodwill from the rush to develop vaccines, drug industry executives have noted, the public is still sensitive to drug pricing and the reputational risk has, so far, curtailed their ability to reap large financial rewards. But that environment, they hope, will change once the pandemic ends: a date that drugmakers themselves reserve the right to declare. Pharmaceutical officials, speaking at recent conferences and on calls with investors, say they expect the virus will linger, morphing from a pandemic into a perennial endemic.

And as Covid-19 mutations continue to spread and booster shots may be required on a regular basis, leaders from the three companies are enthusiastic about cashing in. “As this shifts from pandemic to endemic, we think there’s an opportunity here for us,” said Frank D’Amelio, the chief financial officer for Pfizer, at a conference. Additional factors, such as the need for booster shots, present “a significant opportunity for our vaccine from a demand perspective, from a pricing perspective, given the clinical profile of our vaccine.” Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have also pledged affordability for their vaccines for the duration of the pandemic but have indicated to investors that they plan to return to more “commercial” pricing as early as later this year.

The vaccines are already poised to be some of the most lucrative drugs of all time. The companies are expecting to bring in billions in profit this year alone, and all the major drugmakers with approved coronavirus vaccines received investments and backorders from government agencies. The U.S. government has fully financed the research and development of several coronavirus vaccines, including those produced by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, to the tune of over $2 billion. The U.S. has also provided nearly $2 billion in payments to secure doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, which was developed in partnership with BioNTech, a company that received nearly $500 million in development assistance from the German government.

“..it has been reporting PCR tests as positive when only a single coronavirus gene is detected..”

“Between a quarter and two thirds of positive results were affected..”

• ONS Admits Ignoring Manufacturer Instructions in PCR Testing (LDS)

The Office for National Statistics has admitted that in its Covid infection survey it has been reporting PCR tests as positive when only a single coronavirus gene is detected, despite this being contrary to the instructions of the manufacturer that two or more target genes must be found before a positive result can be declared. According to a rapid response in the BMJ this week by Dr Martin Neil, a statistics professor at the University of London, targeting only a single gene in this way massively increases the risk of a false positive because of the possibility of cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses as well as prevalent bacteria or other contamination. Digging into the detail of the methods followed by the lighthouse laboratories which process the tests for the ONS, Professor Neil writes:

“The kit used by the Glasgow and Milton Keynes lighthouse laboratories is the ThermoFisher TaqPath RT-PCR which tests for the presence of three target genes from SARS-COV-2. Despite Corman et al originating the use of PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2 genes there is no agreed international standard for SARS-COV-2 testing. Instead, the World Health Organisation (WHO) leaves it up to the manufacturer to determine what genes to use and instructs end users to adhere to the manufacturer instructions for use. The WHO’s emergency use assessment for the ThermoFisher TaqPath kit includes the instruction manual and contained therein is an interpretation algorithm describing an unequivocal requirement that two or more target genes be detected before a positive result can be declared.

The latest revision of ThermoFisher’s instruction manual contains the same algorithm. The WHO have been sufficiently concerned about correct use of RT-PCR kits that on January 20th 2021 they issued a notice for PCR users imploring them to review manufacturer instructions for use carefully and adhere to them fully. The ONS’s report of December 5th 2020 lists SARS-CoV-2 positive results for valid two and three target gene combinations and the report of December 21st does the same, for samples processed by the Glasgow and Milton Keynes lighthouse laboratories. However, it also lists single gene detections as positive results.” Between a quarter and two thirds of positive results were affected, Professor Neil found.

“Over the period reported the maximum weekly percentage of positives on a single gene is 38% for the whole of the UK for the week of February 1st. The overall UK average was 23%. The maximum percentage reported is 65%, in East England in the week beginning October 5th. In Wales it was 50%, in Northern Ireland it is 55% and in Scotland it was 56%. The full data including averages and maxima/minima are given in.”

We need more questions for this narrative.

• The ‘Independent’ Report Claiming Uyghur Genocide (CN)

The report relies most substantially on the “expertise” of Adrian Zenz, the far-right evangelical ideologue, whose “scholarship” on China has been demonstrated to be flawed, riddled with falsehoods and dishonest statistical manipulation. The reliance on the voluminous but demonstrably fraudulent work of Zenz is not surprising, given that the report was financed by the Newlines Institute’s parent organization, the Fairfax University of America (FXUA). FXUA is a disgraced institution that Virginia state regulators moved to shut down in 2019 after finding that its “teachers weren’t qualified to teach their assigned courses”, academic quality was “patently deficient,” and plagiarism was “rampant” and ignored.

Just days before the Newlines Institute published its “expert” report accusing China of genocide, an advisory board to the U.S. Department of Education recommended terminating recognition of FXUA’s accreditor, placing its license in jeopardy. The Newlines report presents no new material on the condition of Uyghur Muslims in China. Instead, it claims to have reviewed all of “the available evidence” and applied “international law to the evidence of the facts on the ground.” Rather than conducting a thorough and comprehensive review of “the available evidence,” the report restricted its survey to a narrow range of flawed pseudo-scholarship along with reports by U.S. government-backed lobbying fronts for the exiled Uyghur separatist movement. It was upon this faulty foundation that the report applies legal analysis related to the UN Genocide Convention.

Newlines’ report relies primarily on the dubious studies of Zenz, the U.S. government propaganda outlet, Radio Free Asia, and claims made by the U.S.-funded separatist network, the World Uyghur Congress. These three sources comprise more than one-third of the references used to construct the factual basis of the document, with Zenz as the most heavily relied upon source – cited on more than 50 occasions. Many of the remaining references cite the work of members of Newlines Institute’s “Uyghur Scholars Working Group,” of which Zenz is a founding member and which is made up of a small group of academics who collaborate with him and support his conclusions.

Well, well. Get your MMT at the BBC.

• UK Government Borrowing Hits February Record (BBC)

Ultimately, if it’s consistently spending much more than it has in the past, the state has to raise more money in taxes. But the key word there is “ultimately”. There is no urgency to repaying the government’s debt. More urgent are the debts of small businesses and poorer households. Ordinary households rightly fear getting into too much debt because if interest rates rise, lenders can close in and deploy lawyers and bailiffs with all the attendant unpleasantness. But it is profoundly wrong and misleading to infer that it’s like that for governments who issue their own sovereign currency. Unlike households, governments controlling their own currency can borrow without limit money that they have freshly created.

They therefore can’t go bankrupt. Because almost all of the money borrowed by the government in this financial year (by issuing gilts) will be owed to another public sector body, the Bank of England, it’s nothing like a household borrowing from a bank. And in fact, as the government tacitly acknowledged in its recent Budget, it makes sense in the midst of an economic contraction for the government to spend more, not less – not least because other parts of the economy (households and businesses) aren’t spending anything like what they normally would. Without the additional government spending the economic contraction would, without a shadow of a doubt, be worse.

We’ll defeat ourselves yet.

• Toxic Chemicals, Plummeting Sperm Counts, Shrinking Penises (Erin Brockovich)

The end of humankind? It may be coming sooner than we think, thanks to hormone-disrupting chemicals that are decimating fertility at an alarming rate around the globe. A new book called Countdown, by Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, finds that sperm counts have dropped almost 60% since 1973. Following the trajectory we are on, Swan’s research suggests sperm counts could reach zero by 2045. Zero. Let that sink in. That would mean no babies. No reproduction. No more humans. Forgive me for asking: why isn’t the UN calling an emergency meeting on this right now? The chemicals to blame for this crisis are found in everything from plastic containers and food wrapping, to waterproof clothes and fragrances in cleaning products, to soaps and shampoos, to electronics and carpeting.

Some of them, called PFAS, are known as “forever chemicals”, because they don’t breakdown in the environment or the human body. They just accumulate and accumulate – doing more and more damage, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. Now, it seems, humanity is reaching a breaking point. Swan’s book is staggering in its findings. “In some parts of the world, the average twentysomething woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35,” Swan writes. In addition to that, Swan finds that, on average, a man today will have half of the sperm his grandfather had. “The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” writes Swan, adding: “It’s a global existential crisis.” That’s not hyperbole. That’s just science.

As if this wasn’t terrifying enough, Swan’s research finds that these chemicals aren’t just dramatically reducing semen quality, they are also shrinking penis size and volume of the testes. This is nothing short of a full-scale emergency for humanity. Swan’s book echoes previous research, which has found that PFAS harms sperm production, disrupts the male hormone and is correlated to a “reduction of semen quality, testicular volume and penile length”. These chemicals are literally confusing our bodies, making them send mix messages and go haywire.

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BIS
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