Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 38
July 25, 2025
Hamas welcomes Macron’s pledge to recognize Palestinian statehood
© Getty Images / SOPA Images / ContributorRT
The Gaza-based militant group Hamas has welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that France will recognize Palestine as a state, and is urging other countries to follow suit.
Macron made the pledge on Thursday, with an official declaration expected at the UN General Assembly in September, calling it a step toward advancing Middle East peace. The move was met with sharp criticism from the US and Israel, who warned that it could backfire.
The Islamist group called Macron’s decision a “positive step in the right direction towards justice,” supporting the Palestinians’ “legitimate right to self-determination.”
“We in Hamas consider this important French position a political development that reflects growing international conviction in the justice of the Palestinian cause …” the statement reads.
The militant group urged other nations, particularly EU states, to follow suit.
Several countries, including Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Mexico, have formally done so. Russia officially recognized Palestine’s statehood by re-affirming the USSR’s recognition of the Palestinian declaration of independence in 1988.
Washington and West Jerusalem, however, have accused Macron of “propaganda” and “rewarding terrorism.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recognition under the current conditions “risks creating another Iranian proxy like Gaza.”
France would be the first major country in the G7 – comprised of the US, Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, and Italy – to officially recognize Palestinian statehood.
The proposed deal calls for a 60-day truce, with Hamas releasing ten hostages and the remains of 18 more in phases, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Humanitarian aid would increase, and both sides would negotiate a lasting ceasefire.
Ceasefire talks have stalled over conflicting demands. Hamas insists on a full Israeli withdrawal and a cessation of hostilities for the release of all hostages, while Israel insists that Hamas must disarm and relinquish power if it hopes to achieve peace.
Washington recently recalled its negotiating team for consultations, saying Hamas’ response “clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.”
The conflict started in October 2023 after a Hamas incursion into southern Israel that resulted in 1,200 deaths. Since then, over 59,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
[…]
Via https://www.rt.com/news/621988-hamas-palestine-statehood-france/
The Biggest Chemical Coverup in History
How One Company Secretly Poisoned the Planet
Veritasium (2025)
Film Review
This documentary traces the invention of Teflon in 1934 and Dupont’s systematic efforts to conceal its toxic effects on human beings.
Dupont first began researching forever chemicals (PFAs) to find an alternative to flammable refrigerants like propane and butane. The first PFA refrigerant they produced was Tetrafluorine Ethylene (TFE). Under heat and pressure, the latter forms polytetrafluoroethylene, which is practically indestructible owing to long, tightly bound carbon-fluorine chains that make it inert to chemical interactions.
Initially Dupont produced Teflon exclusively for the top secret to line their pipes and coat their gaskets and seals. Once the war ended, the government released Dupont from their exclusive contract and the company commercialized it, using it to coat iron, pans, snow shovels and (as Scotchguard) waterproof carpet, coats and surgical implants.
The first public awareness of it health risks occurred in 1996, when a Vicksburg farmer living near a Dupont factory and a landfill began losing livestock from wasting disease. ping toxic chemicals. After Wilbur Tennant’s environmental attorney Robert Bilott filed suit against Dupont in 1999, he accessed company records records from 1961 (the same year Teflon-coated cookware hit the market) revealing that C-8 (aka PFOA) they were dumping in the landfill was causing cancer rats. Among other records was were test reports revealing that Dupont workers exposed to C-8 were dying of liver disease and C-8 was entering the public water supply.*
After Dupont settled with Tennant’s family, Bilott filed suit on behalf of 70,000 Parkersburg residents exposed to C-8 through their well water and the public water supply. After a eleven year process in which everyone downstream of the plant (many of whom had developed thyroid, kidney and testicular cancer) was tested for C-8, there was a massive settlement and federal regulators forced Dupont to discontinue Teflon production in West Virginia.**
Dupont responded by creating a spinoff company Temours, which produced GenX (C-6) PFAS, which turned out to be even more dangerous than C-8 and are still used in waterproof clothing, food wrappers and microwaveable popcorn bags.
When tested, 98% of the world’s population have PFAs in their blood, no matter where they live. Children tend to be at highest risk because they drink more water and play on carpets treated with it. As do firefighters exposed to firefighting foam. Most people are exposed to PFAs through their drinking water, especially if they live near a PFA factory, airport or military base (airports and the US military use PFA-containing firefighting foam in their fire drills).
Another source of PFA exposure if food packaging – cardboard and plastic take out containers are coated with it, as are microwaveable popcorn bags.***
Other countries are banning the use of PFAs in hygiene products, cosmetics and food processing.
At present there are no prospects of banning it in medical implants or semiconductors until an alternative is discovered.
* Records indicate Dupont discharged 10,000 tons of it into the Ohio river and 7,000 tons of it into an unlined landfill adjacent to the company
**3M was also forced to take Scotchguard off the market.
***The filmmakers claim it’s unnecessary to discard old Teflon cookware because long chain PFA’s are only released when heated to temperatures higher than those normally used in cooking.
July 24, 2025
Thai-Cambodian Conflict Only Suits American Interests
Sputnik
Earlier on Thursday, there was an escalation of clashes between troops of Thailand and Cambodia on the border, which began with a shootout between ground forces in a disputed area.
The US sees the Thailand-Cambodia escalation “through the lens of divide and rule,” Brian Berletic, geopolitical analyst and former US Marine, told Sputnik.
He warned that if the conflict spirals out of control, it could add to regional conflicts the US is also playing a hand in.
“It will create regional instability, slow growth and development, and give the US an opportunity to reassert influence over the region,” Berletic pointed out.
The analyst noted that the standoff sets back the very economic and political unity China has encouraged across the region. That unity allowed many regional nations “to work out from under generations of Western primacy and outright colonialism,” according to him.
“While both the US and China see the region as a sphere of interest – China sees it through the lens of cooperation and joint development,” Berletic emphasized.
China enjoys close relations with both Cambodia and Thailand, he stressed, adding that Chinese authorities “will almost certainly encourage peace and stability and a quick resolution of the conflict.”
[…]
House panel votes to subpoena Bill and Hillary Clinton over possible links to Ghislaine Maxwell
By Victor Nava
July 23, 2025
A House Oversight panel subcommittee voted to subpoena Bill and Hillary Clinton on Wednesday over their alleged ties to notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) introduced the motion for subpoenas during a Federal Law Enforcement Subcommittee hearing, and it was approved by the Republican-led panel via voice vote, with no roll call taken.
The Clintons and several former top Justice Department officials — ex-FBI Director James Comey, one-time special counsel Robert Mueller and former Attorneys General Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Merrick Garland, Bill Barr, Jeff Sessions and Alberto Gonzales — were included in the list of subpoenas sought by Perry in order to “expand the full committee’s investigation into Ms. Maxwell.”
“Subpoenas will be issued in the future,” a spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee told The Post.
The former president acknowledged in his 2024 book “Citizen: My Life After the White House” that he flew aboard Epstein’s private plane — nicknamed the Lolita Express — in connection to his work with his Clinton Global Initiative nonprofit.
“I wish I had never met him,” Clinton wrote of Epstein, adding that traveling on his plane was “not worth the years of questioning afterward.”
The former president, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the Epstein case, claimed that he had no idea Epstein and Maxwell were sex-trafficking minors.
According to visitor logs, Epstein visited the White House at least 17 times, beginning shortly after Clinton was sworn into office in 1993.
The subcommittee also approved a measure directing Comer to subpoena the Justice Department for the release of all communications between Biden administration officials — including former President Joe Biden — and the DOJ related to the Epstein case.
The subcommittee’s actions come after Comer subpoenaed Maxwell, who has been serving a 20-year prison sentence since 2022, to sit for a deposition with the Oversight Committee.
The deposition has tentatively been scheduled for Aug. 11, at the Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee, where Maxwell has been incarcerated since her conviction on sex-trafficking conspiracy charges.
[…]
Russia Knew Hillary Clinton was on Heavy Tranquilizers During 2016 Campaign
Sanstuti NathThe report says Russian President Vladimir Putin knew Clinton was having “uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness,” but chose not to release it before that year’s election because he thought the Democrat would win. Clinton was reportedly also suffering from “Type 2 diabetes and Ischemic heart disease”
Russia allegedly had damaging intelligence about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “psycho-emotional problems” during her 2016 presidential campaign against Donald Trump, according to a newly declassified intelligence report. The report suggested that Clinton, now 77, was taking “heavy tranquillisers” for treatment, which then President Barack Obama and Democratic Party leaders found to be “extraordinarily alarming.”
The new revelations were part of a September 18, 2020, House Intelligence Committee review on Russia’s influence on the 2016 Presidential Election that Donald Trump won against Clinton. The document–based on at least 20 interviews with intelligence officers and a review of source material for the 2017 Obama-ordered report on Russian election meddling– was declassified and made public on Wednesday by Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence.
The report said that Russian President Vladimir Putin knew Clinton was having “uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness,” but chose not to release it before that year’s election because he thought the Democrat would win.
Clinton was reportedly also suffering from “Type 2 diabetes, Ischemic heart disease, deep vein thrombosis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease” at the time.
“Putin chose not to leak the most damaging and compromising material on Hillary Clinton prior to the election; instead planning to release it after the election to weaken what Moscow viewed would be an inevitable Clinton presidency,” it said.
Fox News reported that a section of the report also states that the material in Putin’s possession allegedly showed that some senior Democrat leaders, including Obama, found Clinton’s health to be “extraordinarily alarming” and were worried that it could have a “serious negative impact” on her ability to beat Trump that November. Clinton eventually lost the election to Trump, sending the Republican to the White House in January.
“As of September 2016, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service had Democratic National Committee (DNC) information that President Obama and Party leaders found the state of Secretary Clinton’s health to be ‘extraordinarily alarming,’ and felt it could have ‘serious negative impact’ on her election prospects,” the report stated.
“Her health information was being kept in ‘strictest secrecy’ and even close advisors were not being fully informed,” it added.
Further the Russians also reportedly had information about a “campaign email discussing a plan approved by Secretary Clinton to link Putin and Russian hackers to candidate Trump in order to ‘distract the American public’ from the Clinton email server scandal,” per the Fox news report.
[…]
Is Trump’s DOJ Offering Ghislaine Maxwell a Deal?
Brian Shilhavy
Epstein partner Ghislaine Maxwell is meeting with Trump’s DOJ right now before she appears in Congress in a couple of weeks. Is Trump offering her a deal to keep quiet?
Good video report from MeidasTouch.
I don’t think the Obama distraction is going too well, at least not with everyone outside of MAGA land. This story keeps growing..
Europe’s clever war plan
Dmitry Orlov
Europe’s leaders are busily hatching plans for remilitarization, getting ready for the Russians to attack, which happens to be something that the Russians, most insultingly, have no intention of doing. But that’s just the same; if the Russians don’t want to attack Europe, perhaps Europe can attack Russia instead? Does that seem like a spectacularly dumb idea? Well, perhaps it does, but even such a high level of stupidity is hardly enough to derail Europe’s remilitarization project. It would take more than mere stupidity: a lack of money, perhaps, or a lack of industrial capacity.
In any case, the plan of the European elites is as follows:
1. Spend lots of borrowed money on useless weapons systems, pocket part of that money and park it offshore.
2. Provoke Russia into starting a war by genociding Russian populations in any locations where they are concentrated in large numbers (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Transnistria, Cyprus; Russia itself).
3. Suffer a humiliating defeat and declare unconditional surrender.
4. Flee to a tropical paradise and enjoy their ill-gotten wealth, leaving the Russians to attempt to mitigate the ensuing humanitarian disaster.
If ever this plan doesn’t seem sufficiently brilliant to Europe’s leaders, all that means is that it’s time to up the dose of cocaine. This magic substance can make even the dullest former banker, trade union functionary or lady-gynecologist seem (to him/herself) as a brilliant military strategist.
The entire EU apparatus in Brussels is betting on war — and not for victory, but for profit. And not so much for profit in the traditional sense of making something useful and selling it profitably, but in the sense of scaring the public using phantom threats, running up public debt and pocketing some of it. The European military-industrial complex, stuffed with politicians’ friends and relatives, requires money. Unfortunately, to make that money flow requires some blood to flow as well.
The price of the question at the moment stands at around 800 billion euros — but that’s only in the near future; in the longer term, the sky is the limit. France alone is planning to allocate 431 billion euros for the needs of its army next year, which happens to be more than Russia’s entire military budget. Note the difference, however: Russia is fighting and winning a major land war while France doesn’t even have a fighting force it could field except for the rather tiny Foreign Legion. But it does have quite a few money-grubbing military bureaucrats.
You might think that I am somehow prejudiced against France, so here are some dry facts. France is not officially at war. It is not conducting any military operations anywhere (training exercises don’t count). It does not participate in armed conflicts anywhere in the world (French mercenaries don’t count). Then why does it need 431 billion euros’ worth of weapons?
The answer is both frightening and hilarious at the same time: the French are preparing to go to war against Russia. They are even mentioning some specific numbers: they imagine that they might need 50 thousand soldiers. They imagine that Britain and Germany will join their coalition of voluntary interventionists, adding up to a mighty army of at least 100-150 thousand European souls disporting themselves on the ground somewhere in the former Ukraine, daring the Russians to drive them out — which the Russians are prepared to do quite readily. Roughly half of them would depart in body bags, the rest bandaged up and contused. In dealing with European forces, the Russians would not hold back, as they do with the Ukrainians, whom they see as mentally ill, violent family members and try to treat gently.
Ignoring that inevitable eventuality, the European leaders imagine deploying tanks (which would have to keep well away from Russian positions because the Russians would blow them up using, for instance, Lancet drones as soon as they are spotted and within range). They also imagine deploying fighter jets to control the sky over the former Ukraine (ignoring the fact that the Russians would, once again, blow them out of the air as soon as they are within range). There may also be some frigates (illegal in the Black Sea under the Montreaux Convention of 1936).
If these plans seem a bit sketchy, then that’s because they are. I am not an expert on military matters, but the last three years of observing continuous military action on the Ukrainian front has perhaps taught me more than the European officials in charge of military policy seem able to grasp. Take Macron, for instance, who is, unfortunately, never at a loss for words: he openly declares his intention to take control of the land, sky and sea in and around the former Ukraine. It is as if the Russian forces don’t exist. What is that, willful ignorance or hysterical blindness?
Meanwhile, Monsieur Lecornu seems a bit more at home with reality and honestly admits: Russia takes control of several hundred square kilometers every month and will come to control Western Ukraine once the Kiev regime collapses. This implies that there will be no formerly Ukrainian territory left for Macron’s mighty forces to control. Do these two talk to each other? Perhaps they are so full of themselves that they can talk but can’t listen…
They do seem to agree on a common bit of ideology, synthesized into a basic formula: “the demilitarization of Ukraine is unacceptable in principle.” This is no longer even a veiled threat; it is a casus belli — a reason, a justification, a pretext for war. Anything can serve as the formal trigger: an accidental explosion, a staged provocation, even some imaginary incident trumpeted by Europe’s fake news media. The important point is that the political decision to intervene militarily seems to have already been made — and not for any strategic reason but purely out of greed. Everyone who is close to the defense contracts makes money on war. Europe no longer hides its motivations. It is willing to sell the death of its citizens in exchange for kickbacks and other forms of grift.
Will it ever come to a real, hot war? This is by no means certain. But the logic of events and the level of nervous hysteria in Western capitals indicate that they want to glue their broken world order back together by borrowing close to a trillion euros and throwing it at the defense contractors. The logic of this action will then require tens of thousands of their citizens to be sent to places where they will be maimed or killed — all for the sake of staying in power and personal self-enrichment.
This problem begs for a political solution. The question is, is such a solution even possible given the degenerate state of European politics? Yes, AfD is now the majority party in Germany (by a slim margin); but it is still being kept out of power. Such shifts may imply something significant, or they may signify nothing. So far, they are not preventing popularly detested nonentities such as Macron, Merz and Starmer from conspiring to take Europe to war against Russia.<
The best scenario imaginable is that their attempt to borrow a trillion euros will fail (for instance, because the US Federal Reserve, fearful of triggering a hyperinflationary spiral, will refuse to print a corresponding amount of dollars); or that their rearmament program will fail (because there isn’t enough of an industrial base left in Europe); or that their attempts to hold on to power will fail (because the Europeans will somehow generate enough brainpower to vote them out). This last bit — where the Europeans have to actually do something to save themselves — is admittedly the hardest to imagine.
What is easiest to imagine is that Russia will once again rise to the occasion and neutralize the military threat coming from Europe, as it had done with the Teutonic Knights, the Swedes, the Poles, the French and the Germans. What is different this time is that Russia is now at its strongest and supremely well prepared to execute this task. But this task is an onerous one, and this time around the Russians may decide to make sure that Europe never poses a threat to Russia again, refashioning it into a collection of demilitarized, deindustrialized ethnic enclaves. After all, who said that demilitarization and denazification is just for the Ukrainians? But perhaps the Russians won’t have to do this; after all, that seems to be the direction in which Europe is heading in any case.
[…]
Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/6618eb1b-fc2e-4b39-8801-9f8d065dad6c
July 23, 2025
Maybe AI Isn’t Going To Replace You At Work After All
Charles Hugh Smith via Zero Hedge
AI fails at tasks where accuracy must be absolute to create value.
In reviewing the on-going discussions about how many people will be replaced by AI, I find a severe lack of real-world examples. I’m remedying this deficiency with an example of AI’s failure in the kind of high-value work that many anticipate will soon be performed by AI.
Few things in life are more pervasively screechy than hype, which brings us to the current feeding-frenzy of AI hype. Since we all read the same breathless claims and have seen the videos of robots dancing, I’ll cut to the chase: Nobody posts videos of their robot falling off a ladder and crushing the roses because, well, the optics aren’t very warm and fuzzy.
For the same reason, nobody’s sharing the AI tool’s error that forfeited the lawsuit. The only way to really grasp the limits of these tools is to deploy them in the kinds of high-level, high-value work that they’re supposed to be able to do with ease, speed and accuracy, because nobody’s paying real money to watch robots dance or read a copycat AI-generated essay on Yeats that’s tossed moments after being submitted to the professor.
In the real world of value creation, optics don’t count, accuracy counts. Nobody cares if the AI chatbot that churned out the Yeats homework hallucinated mid-stream because nobody’s paying for AI output that has zero scarcity value: an AI-generated class paper, song or video joins 10 million similar copycat papers / songs / videos that nobody pays attention to because they can create their own in 30 seconds.
So let’s examine an actual example of AI being deployed to do the sort of high-level, high-value work that it’s going to need to nail perfectly to replace us all at work. My friend Ian Lind, whom I’ve known for 50 years, is an investigative reporter with an enviably lengthy record of the kind of journalism few have the experience or resources to do. (His blog is www.iLind.net, ian@ilind.net)
The judge’s letter recommending Ian for the award he received from the American Judges Association for distinguished reporting about the Judiciary ran for 18 pages, and that was just a summary of his work.
Ian’s reporting/blogging in the early 2000s inspired me to try my hand at it in 2005.
Ian has spent the last few years helping the public understand the most complex federal prosecution case in Hawaii’s recent history, and so the number of documents that have piled up is enormous. He’s been experimenting with AI tools (NotebookLM, Gemini, ChatGPT) for months on various projects, and he recently shared this account with me:
“My experience has definitely been mixed. On the one hand, sort of high level requests like ‘identify the major issues raised in the documents and sort by importance’ produced interesting and suggestive results. But attempts to find and pull together details on a person or topic almost always had noticeable errors or hallucinations. I would never be able to trust responses to even what I consider straightforward instructions. Too many errors. Looking for mentions of ‘drew’ in 150 warrants said he wasn’t mentioned. But he was, I’ve gone back and found those mentions. I think the bots read enough to give an answer and don’t keep incorporating data to the end. The shoot from the hip and, in my experience, have often produced mistakes. Sometimes it’s 25 answers and one glaring mistake, sometimes more basic.”
Let’s start with the context. This is similar to the kind of work performed by legal services. Ours is a rule-of-law advocacy system, so legal proceedings are consequential. They aren’t a ditty or a class paper, and Ian’s experience is mirrored by many other professionals.
Let’s summarize AI’s fundamental weaknesses:
1. AI doesn’t actually “read” the entire collection of texts. In human terms, it gets “bored” and stops once it has enough to generate a credible response.
2. AI has digital dementia. It doesn’t necessarily remember what you asked for in the past nor does it necessarily remember its previous responses to the same queries.
3. AI is fundamentally, irrevocably untrustworthy. It makes errors that it doesn’t detect (because it didn’t actually “read” the entire trove of text) and it generates responses that are “good enough,” meaning they’re not 100% accurate, but they have the superficial appearance of being comprehensive and therefore acceptable. This is the “shoot from the hip” response Ian described.
In other words, 90% is good enough, as who cares about the other 10% in a college paper, copycat song or cutesy video.
But in real work, the 10% of errors and hallucinations actually matter, because the entire value creation of the work depends on that 10% being right, not half-assed.
In the realm of LLM AI, getting Yeats’ date of birth wrong–an error without consequence–is the same as missing the defendant’s name in 150 warrants. These programs are text / content prediction engines; they don’t actually “know” or “understand” anything. They can’t tell the difference between a consequential error and a “who cares” error.
This goes back to the classic AI thought experiment The Chinese Room, which posits a person who doesn’t know the Chinese language in a sealed room shuffling symbols around that translate English words to Chinese characters.
From the outside, it appears that the black box (the sealed room) “knows Chinese” because it’s translating English to Chinese. But the person–or AI agent–doesn’t actually “know Chinese”, or understand any of what’s been translated. It has no awareness of languages, meanings or knowledge.
This describes AI agents in a nutshell.
4. AI agents will claim their response is accurate when it is obviously lacking, they will lie to cover their failure, and then lie about lying. If pressed, they will apologize and then lie again. Read this account to the end: Diabolus Ex Machina.
In summary: AI fails at tasks where accuracy must be absolute to create value. lacking this, it’s not just worthless, it’s counter-productive and even harmful, creating liabilities far more consequential than the initial errors.
“But they’re getting better.” No, they’re not–not in what matters. AI agents are probabilistic text / content prediction machines; they’re trained parrots in the Chinese Room. They don’t actually “know” anything or “understand” anything, and adding another gazillion pages to their “training” won’t change this.
The Responsible Lie: How AI Sells Conviction Without Truth:
“The widespread excitement around generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and DeepSeek, is built on a fundamental misunderstanding. While these systems impress users with articulate responses and seemingly reasoned arguments, the truth is that what appears to be ‘reasoning’ is nothing more than a sophisticated form of mimicry.
These models aren’t searching for truth through facts and logical arguments–they’re predicting text based on patterns in the vast datasets they’re ‘trained’ on. That’s not intelligence–and it isn’t reasoning. And if their ‘training’ data is itself biased, then we’ve got real problems.
I’m sure it will surprise eager AI users to learn that the architecture at the core of LLMs is fuzzy–and incompatible with structured logic or causality. The thinking isn’t real, it’s simulated, and is not even sequential. What people mistake for understanding is actually statistical association.”
AI Has a Critical Flaw — And it’s Unfixable
“AI isn’t intelligent in the way we think it is. It’s a probability machine. It doesn’t think. It predicts. It doesn’t reason. It associates patterns. It doesn’t create. It remixes. Large Language Models (LLMs) don’t understand meaning — they predict the next word in a sentence based on training data.”
Let’s return now to the larger context of AI replacing human workers en masse. This post by Michael Spencer of AI Supremacy and Jing Hu of 2nd Order Thinkers offers a highly informed and highly skeptical critique of the hype that AI will unleash a tsunami of layoffs that will soon reach the tens of millions. Will AI Agents really Automate Jobs at Scale?
Jing Hu explains the fundamental weaknesses in all these agents: it’s well worth reading her explanations and real-world examples in the link above. Here is an excerpt:
“Today’s agents have minimal true agency.
Their ‘initiative’ is largely an illusion; behind the scenes, they follow (or are trying to) tightly choreographed steps that a developer or prompt writer set up.
If you ask an agent to do Task X, it will do X, then stop. Ask for Y, and it does Y. But if halfway through X something unexpected happens, say a form has a new field, or an API call returns an error, the agent breaks down.
Because it has zero understanding of the task.
Change the environment slightly (e.g., update an interface or move a button), and the poor thing can’t adapt on the fly.
AI agents today lack a genuine concept of overarching goals or the common-sense context that humans use.
They’re essentially text prediction engines.”
I’ve shared my own abysmal experiences with “customer service” AI bots:
Digital Service Dumpster Fires and Shadow Work
Here’s my exploration of the kinds of experiential real-world skills AI won’t master with total capital and operational costs that are lower than the cost of human labor: oops, that hallucination just sawed through a 220V electrical line that wasn’t visible but the human knew was there:
What AI Can’t Do Faster, Better, or Cheaper Than Humans (June 2, 2025)
And here is a selection of my essays on AI, which I have been following since the early 1980s:
https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/maybe-ai-isnt-going-replace-you-work-after-all
Historic First: Brussels Judge Orders Halt to Arms Transit to Israel
By Mark Vandepitte
In a landmark ruling, the Brussels Court of First Instance has ordered the Flemish government not only to block a specific container of military equipment bound for Israel, but also to ban any further transit of military material to the country.
The judge ruled that Flanders — a region in the north of Belgium — is systematically failing to meet its obligations under arms legislation and international treaties, and even imposed a penalty for each shipment that goes through despite the ruling.
The four Flemish NGOs that filed the case were granted full victory on all points.
The container at the center of the case is located in the port of Antwerp. It contains so-called tapered roller bearings, produced by Timken via a French branch, and destined for Ashot Ashkelon Industries, an Israeli defense company that supplies components for Merkava tanks and Namer armored vehicles.
According to the organizations, these systems are used daily in the genocide in Gaza.
In its ruling, the court immediately prohibits the Flemish government from authorizing any new arms transit to Israel. Since 2009, there has been an agreement not to export weapons to Israel that could reinforce its armed forces — a policy that has been seriously eroded in practice.
To enforce this, the court has imposed a penalty of 50,000 euros for each shipment that still leaves for Israel.
Containers may only be shipped to Israel if the Flemish government has written proof that the goods are intended for civilian use. According to lawyer Lies Michielsen of Progress Lawyers Network, who pleaded the case, the ruling implies that the government must actively verify the final destination of goods exported to Israel.
SignificanceThis ruling is highly significant because the court has confirmed that facilitating the delivery of weapons to a state committing war crimes or possible genocide is illegal.
“The court is stating what politics refuses to acknowledge,” says Fien De Meyer from the League for Human Rights.
This means an end to impunity: governments can no longer look away while their weapons are used for atrocities.
The ruling sets a legal precedent that forces European and other governments to take responsibility. Similar lawsuits in other countries are expected to follow.
In any case, it is a victory for peace and solidarity movements, showing that resistance works.
Follow-UpAround the same time, another lawsuit was filed in Belgium — this time against the federal government. A group of Palestinian claimants and Belgian organizations sent a formal notice to the federal government, accusing Belgium of passive complicity in the genocide in Gaza.
If no satisfactory response is received, they will proceed to court — which would also be a global first.
The action is led by a Palestinian citizen, several Belgian NGOs, and a legal expert. They demand that Belgium halt all military deliveries to Israel, confiscate imports from occupied Palestinian territories, block investments in those areas, and suspend the EU-Israel association agreement.
According to them, Belgium’s passivity is both morally and legally unacceptable. The action is supported by a group of artists and intellectuals who are raising funds for legal costs.
There is also movement at the European level. The legal NGO JURDI is taking both the European Commission and the Council of the European Union to the Court of Justice for their “negligence” regarding the violence in Gaza. For the first time in history, these two powerful institutions are being sued for failing to uphold their own treaty obligations.
JURDI cites Article 265 of the EU Treaty, which makes institutional inaction punishable. According to them, EU institutions are applying double standards: Russia was heavily sanctioned, while Israel remains untouched despite clear human rights violations.
JURDI is demanding, among other things, the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the termination of subsidies, and sanctions against Israeli officials. The complaint argues that the EU is both legally and morally obligated to act and warns that even European leaders could be prosecuted for complicity in genocide.
ComplicityAt the heart of these cases lies the question: does a country — or by extension, the European Commission — have a legal obligation, as a third party, to prevent genocide elsewhere? According to the Genocide Convention, it does. That treaty obliges every country not only to punish genocide but also to actively prevent it.
In January, the International Court of Justice already called on Israel to take all necessary measures to prevent genocide. But does that obligation also apply to countries like Belgium, which are not directly involved?
According to eighteen top Belgian jurists, the answer is yes. In a letter, they warn that a country like Belgium risks being brought before the International Court of Justice itself if it continues to remain silent about the situation in Gaza. Passivity can be legally interpreted as complicity.
The jurists are demanding sanctions against Israel and consider suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement as an absolute minimum. Countries too often hide behind diplomatic caution, but according to them, that attitude is legally and morally untenable. Only concrete actions — not words — can save the credibility of Belgium and the EU.
No PauseThe court victory in Flanders and other ongoing legal proceedings represent a qualitative leap in the fight against genocide. But that fight is far from over. Genocide does not pause. While politicians delay, people in Gaza suffer end die.
Now is the time to maintain and intensify pressure. Legal actions must be brought in other countries as well. Key demands include the immediate enforcement of the ban on arms deliveries, full transparency about the export of military equipment, and prosecution of those complicit in these crimes.
Lawsuits like this are very important, but certainly not sufficient to stop the killing in Gaza. Political leaders worldwide must be pressured through mass protests and acts of solidarity.
That is why the Palestinian resistance movements in Gaza have jointly issued a call for global mobilization starting on 20 July 2025 to save the population in Gaza from genocide, hunger, and thirst caused by the Israeli occupation.
They denounce the international silence and call on countries and citizens around the world to take to the streets and act to halt the genocide.
[…]
Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/judge-orders-halt-arms-transit-israel/5895770
China Abruptly Sells $8.2 Billion in US Treasury Bonds
Alex Richardson
June 28, 2025
China’s US Treasury holdings have dropped to 2009 levels after its central bank sold more than $8 billion in the month of April.
According to a new update from the Treasury Department, China held $757.2 billion worth of Treasuries at the end of April 2025 – down from $765.4 billion in March and $784.3 in February.
China now holds significantly fewer T-bills than the UK’s $807.7 billion, and sits in third place on the list of the biggest major foreign holders of Treasuries after over 17 years of being in second place.
China’s big offloading of Treasuries appears to be part of a broader reconfiguration of the country’s financial strategy.
Macro analyst Adam Kobeissi reports that China’s Treasury-dumping spree has coincided with an extremely aggressive accumulation of gold that has only accelerated since 2022.
“China is diversifying its currency reserves out of the US Dollar:
The share of US Treasury Holdings in total Chinese FX reserves has declined by ~15 percentage points since 2016, to ~22%, near the lowest in at least 15 years.
Over the same period, gold’s share has risen ~5 percentage points, to a record 6.8%.
This trend accelerated in 2022, and since then, gold’s share of Chinese reserves has doubled.
Over this time, China has acquired ~200 tonnes of gold.
Gold is more desired than ever.”
Since 2022, the US dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the USD against a weighted basked of other major foreign currencies, is down over 15% since 2022, creating skepticism about the greenback’s future as a world reserve asset.
Last week, “Black Swan” author Nassim Taleb said that the dollar had already been effectively been replaced by gold as the world’s reserve currency.
Says Taleb,
“You can see the accumulation of gold in the reserves and the behavior of gold over the past 12 months. And it didn’t start with Trump’s policies. Of course, it started with Biden when he froze the accounts of people connected to Putin, and of course, thinking that it would be limited there, but people not connected to Putin decided to stay away from the euro and the dollar.
And gold is effectively now the reserve currency. Transactions take place in dollars and euros, usually dollars, and at the same rate, however, they get converted back into gold. And we can see that from the accumulation of reserves.”
[…]
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