The European Commission has released some excellent draft guidelines to promote faster and better AI innovations, given the first deadline of the EU’s AI Act has come into effect. The stated motivators are removing “unacceptable risk” in AI, prohibiting certain practices under European law, in order to help the industry sustainably grow.

Key Guidelines

The clarification on practices deemed unacceptable are mapped out by potential risks to human values and fundamental rights, including:

• Harmful manipulation using subliminal or deceptive techniques
• Social scoring that could lead to unfavorable treatment of individuals
• Emotion recognition in workplace and educational settings (with some exceptions)
• Real-time remote biometric identification in public spaces for law enforcement (with limited exceptions)
• Untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet to create facial recognition databases
• Biometric categorization systems that infer sensitive characteristics like race or sexual orientation
• Individual criminal risk assessment based solely on profiling

These are basically integrity breach rules, reminiscent of how SB1386 confidentiality breach rules of 2003 unleashed a decade of rapid innovation in technology and expansion of the markets related to identity and encryption.

The recent enactment of SB 1386 and SB 1 suggests California is continuing to lead the nation in efforts to protect consumer rights. This creates unique challenges for national and global companies doing business in California or with California residents.

Enforcement and Penalties

Violations of the EU AI Act face only modest penalties—up to 7% of global annual turnover or €35 million, whichever is greater. It remains to be seen whether AI developers and deployers will prioritize compliance given these financial deterrents, which some may view as merely operational costs. Historically, certain American technology companies have appeared to adopt a “catch-me-if-you-can” strategy, seemingly preferring to pay a lazy tax for doing intentional harm to their users, rather than accepting any nudges to innovate.

The prohibitions are now in effect yet enforcement is likely to be staggered as EU Member States have until August 2 to designate the authorities responsible for overseeing them. The guidelines are also currently published in draft form, while translations are still rolling out for all official EU languages.

Legal Status

The Commission emphasizes the guidelines are non-binding, because authoritative interpretations are reserved for the Court of Justice of the European Union. However, they nonetheless spark innovation through insights into how the Commission interprets prohibitions, along with practical examples to help stakeholders understand their obligations.

This initiative represents another step in the EU’s movement towards the lead of global AI with a sensible regulatory framework that balances functionality and features of technology with basic protection of human rights.

The IDF’s extensive investigations into the October 7 terrorist attack reveal Hamas had been planning since April 2022 and reached 85% readiness by September 2022—timing that aligns with the reported Hamas leadership visits to Moscow mentioned in this blog’s earlier analysis.

While the IDF probe focuses on catastrophic intelligence failures—including tragically mischaracterizing Yahya Sinwar as “a pragmatist” and dismissing clear warning signs, these findings beg another look into potential external support.

The confirmed timeline and scale of planning (5,000 terrorists to overwhlem 767 IDF troops) raises legitimate questions about Hamas’s capabilities and possible technical assistance. The sophisticated electronic jamming and precision tactics noted in our immediate analysis on October 7, 2023 deserve renewed scrutiny now in light of the IDF’s admission that top Israeli leaders severely underestimated Hamas’s military evolution.

This doesn’t validate conspiracy theories, rather it does suggest we should look more carefully at who enabled Hamas to execute such a complex operation while completely fooling Israeli intelligence, and why.

As Trump unleashes untold abuse and harm upon America, aligning with a Putin to undermine his own state, Netanyahu is described by the IDF in terms of negligence demanding an explanation.

Throughout history, democratic societies have repeatedly failed to recognize the dangers posed by figures who threaten vulnerable groups while simultaneously claiming victimhood themselves. When Hitler rose to power in the early 1930s, German media and institutions treated his explicitly violent rhetoric as political hyperbole while he positioned himself as a victim of unfair treatment. By 1933, it was too late. False equivalence framed as a need for “balance” enabled devastating consequences.

This historical pattern is repeating today. Elon Musk, as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is now saying nobody’s life matters except his.

Elon Musk tells Donald Trump’s cabinet he’s getting ‘death threats’.

This victimhood claim comes after he previously tweeted concern about the lack of assassination attempts against presidential candidates, and then doubled down when challenged:

Nobody has “even tried” to assassinate a prominent public figure is the point he’s trying to make, from his occultist costumed Twitter avatar?

The calculated asymmetry becomes clear when you consider the context: while claiming victimhood, Musk has simultaneously used visceral and violent language against federal workers.

This systematic dismantling of federal workforce protections—executed without transition periods—creates institutional chaos that experts describe as terminal.

“Once you do this damage, it’s going to be incredibly hard to rebuild the capacity of these organizations,” said Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan.

Approximately 350,000 federal employees have reportedly been terminated, creating what experts call an “unprecedented internal vulnerability” in America’s institutional defenses. This gutting of expertise across agencies responsible for public safety, cybersecurity, and critical infrastructure represents a massive degradation of government capacity, while Musk celebrates terminal events as “efficiency” and signals intentions to expedite death.

This violent dehumanization of government workers echoes historical patterns where civil servants are first rhetorically transformed into enemies before being systematically destroyed, even murdered.

When someone in power harms hundreds of thousands while simultaneously portraying himself as a victim, it creates a dangerous dynamic. Historians like Hannah Arendt identified this calculated asymmetry in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” as a strategic inconsistency that authoritarians exploit: demanding democratic protections while undermining those same protections for others.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder calls such theatrical displays “anticipatory propaganda” of tyranny – a technique that conditions audiences to accept actual institutional violence by first presenting it as performance or spectacle:

The human impact is significant: careers terminated midstream, institutional knowledge lost, and critical government functions compromised. These are measurable harms affecting real people, not abstract policy differences.

Historian Robert Paxton identified this as a key feature of Trump’s fascist movement: the leader who positions himself as simultaneously all-powerful and perpetually under threat. Musk’s background in apartheid-era South Africa in a Hitler-promoting family claiming vulnerability to Blacks, during the rise of the AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging) Nazi Party claiming vulnerability to Blacks, is foundational to his worldview of violent racist authoritarian control as a goal.

This pattern of disregard for collateral damage extends beyond government to decades of his corporate behavior, where critics have repeatedly sued over safety concerns involving his vehicles being minimized and critics silenced. The corporate pattern foreshadowed the larger-scale threats and institutional violence we now witness.

The growing death toll associated with both his corporate and governmental roles follows the same pattern: claim victimhood while creating mass casualties. Democracy itself will be the actual victim, with many lives lost in the near future, unless we recognize and respond to these warning signs from history.

It was a turtle skull on a plane that set off alarm bells for officers, listening to two hunters loudly boast about a Napa-based operation killing endangered species.

The officers were dressed in plain clothes and seated in front of a couple who were discussing hunting. A conversation with the officers and the unsuspecting couple ensued that ultimately led to the couple disclosing that they were transporting a sea turtle skull from the East Coast in their luggage. The couple also discussed their unlawful take of a mountain lion, which is a specially protected species in California illegal to hunt or possess in whole or in part.

The couple then spoke openly about a close family member’s unlawful possession of multiple taxidermized mountain lions, a wolverine and wolves at the family member’s residence in Napa County. The couple then proceeded to share a video with the wildlife officers of the family member’s “trophy room” where the illegal mounts were displayed.

After deboarding the plane, the wildlife officers asked if the couple would show them the sea turtle skull. The suspects acknowledged the potential unlawful possession and waited until after any Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers could see before showing the officers the sea turtle skull concealed in a jacket inside their carry-on luggage. The skull belonged to a green sea turtle, a federally listed endangered species illegal to possess and transport.

These murderous criminals were fined around $2,000 each, which seems absurd given the huge amount of irrecoverable damage intentionally done. And they had their license for hunting pulled? I’m sure that doesn’t mean anything to them anyway.

In the process of serving the search warrant in Butte County, wildlife officers found the couple processing a deer that was taken illegally earlier in the day. Deer season was closed, and the suspects had no deer tags. Also inside the residence, wildlife officers found mountain lion claws, a ringtail cat, a barn owl mount, an illegal spike buck and several unlawfully taken deer with tagging violations.

Ringtail cats are a fully protected species in California. Mounted raptors and raptor parts are illegal to possess without appropriate state and federal permits.

At the family member’s residence in Napa County, meanwhile, wildlife officers discovered two illegal, full-bodied taxidermized mountain lions and one full-bodied taxidermized wolverine. Wolverines are another fully protected species in California illegal to possess.

No tags. No licenses. No worries, apparently for 24-year-old Byron Lee Fitzpatrick, 28-year-old Shannon Lee Price and 64-year-old Harry Vern Fitzpatrick. Here they are wearing a Florida “MadeByMommaCraftCo” image of Santa Claus holding a shotgun, above the phrase “Tis the Season”, openly celebrating murder of vulnerable endangered sea turtle.

While the report says these arrogant and sloppy criminals couldn’t wait to show wildlife officers a green sea turtle skull, to me it looks like a loggerhead was killed.

Had they been holding up a big bag of smuggled cocaine to show officers instead, while wearing an image of Santa Claus smoking a cigar, just think of the penalties.

Like human and narcotics trafficking, wildlife trafficking of both live animals and animal parts is known to fund transnational criminal organizations and their violent activities all over the world. The individuals involved exhibited a flagrant disregard for laws governing natural resources and are now being held accountable for their actions.

Ok, strong words, yet only $2,000 in fines? Come on. Take the market value of all those endangered animals to start with, then add the market value of the equipment used, including the buildings, vehicles and all hunting gear. If penalties aren’t close to those levels of profit, rising to true accountability is doubtful.

Consider, for example, an arrest following a tip to offers can lead to a $3,500 reward. Are rewards for catching these criminals higher than penalties for the crimes? If you are witness to any California poaching you can call CALTIP at 888 334-CALTIP (888 334-2258) or use CitizenObserver.com by texting “CALTIP” followed by a space and your message to 847411 (tip411). CALTIP also offers a smartphone App for anonymous communication with wildlife officers.