The real threat isn't AI — it's the people running it

Machines can only follow patterns; they have no will or consciousness — yet this "AI" is a powerful tool in the hands of a ruling oligarchy that's locking ordinary people out of the economy and culture.💸 Please support my work. You'll benefit from doing so.

When the UK family courts removed her nine-year-old son Gabriel with armed police – based on no clinical evidence whatsoever – former physiotherapist Kate Markland was left with one hour a week on FaceTime.Instead of falling apart, they turned that hour into a co-created fantasy fiction series; "The Adventures of Gabriel" is now three books, reaching children worldwide, and winning press and awards across the world.This is a story about turning pain into purpose, and refusing to quit when the state resorts to totalitarianism.

I attended UK Column's 20th anniversary weekend event in Plymouth, in the UK. Coming from South Africa, I wasn't used to all the bureaucratic red tape; the regulations, the micro-management — and having to pay for anything and everything, including drop-off charges at Heathrow, and even air for car tyres.No wonder the British people appear miserable and demoralised.

I spoke to Peter Breggin, one of America's most prolific psychiatrists and my oldest guest ever at 90, fresh from a stroke, and still warning about pharmaceutical drugs.He argues that Lindsay Clancy would never have killed her kids without psychiatric pills, and that no drug can treat the root of her distress, or that of millions of parents. Big Pharma doesn't see patients as people, but as experiments.

Continuing my 9/11 series, this conversation is with a man who was part of the cleanup operation at the Pentagon. He saw no evidence of any aircraft wreckage. None. Nothing. In fact, what he saw didn't look like a plane crash at all. He doesn't know what hit the building, but he doesn't believe it was a Boeing.This was recorded in 2024.The video version, which includes slides, is on my website.

Since it's the 25th anniversary, I will share a few 9/11-related conversations, starting with this one with Mark Conlon. He argues that no planes flew into the Twin Towers. He adds that planes did take off, but flew somewhere else. And he has flight recordings as evidence.I recommend watching the video version over at my website.

I recorded this in early 2025.Wally Green grew up in a tough part of Brooklyn, New York, where life was dangerous, and he found himself in gangs.Then table tennis saved him. He later played in North Korea as the only American there, in front of 5,000 people. What he saw was very different from what we are told about that country.

Sean Stone, son of Hollywood director Oliver Stone, is no favourite of the film industry; both father and son have been labelled "conspiracy theorists".Sean and I spoke about the dark forces he believes control the world, from cover-ups like 9/11 and the moon landing, to ancient bloodlines, The Beatles not recording their own music, and Shakespeare being a hoax.

Cuban-born Austrian economist Jorge Besada explains why human decisions matter more than numbers in economics, and why private property is the true foundation of both innovation and free speech, adding that it can break apart the evils of Zionism. He compares it with the Soviet Union as another flawed ideology built on coercion.

In this week's UK Column banter with Mike and Charles, we chat about leaving our cellphones in another room when we go to bed, and using analogue watches for the time and our alarms. We also ask why everything, from architecture to art to music, has become so poor quality, ugly and simplistic.