IDIOTIZED PUBLICS

ERIC BLAIR—Fast forward to 2012 when Obama declared his “Pivot to Asia”. This Orwellian term was far from benign and China was well aware that the real aim of the USA was to turn its gunsights on China to prevent its rise. If the USA could not compete on a level playing field, its default mode was to resort to sabotage of perceived competitors, whether economic or subversive (colour revolutions, sponsorship of separatist terrorists, etc) or military. The fact that the USA subsequently placed 60% of its entire military assets in the Pacific theatre, based in three concentric “island kill chains” surrounding China (US doctrinal language), validated China’s concerns.

VANESSA BEELEY—UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese warned that Resolution 2803 “runs counter to the Palestinian right to self-determination” and risks legitimizing “ongoing mass violence.” She said the Council failed to ground its response in the body of law it is obligated to uphold, noting: “I am deeply perplexed… the Council has chosen not to act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.”

Albanese said the resolution entrenches “external control over Gaza’s governance, borders, security, and reconstruction,” replacing legal obligations with a “security-first, capital-driven model of foreign control.”

INDRAJIT—Donald Trump is a farce of nature. He makes big changes across the global economy, in spectacularly self-owning ways. In a flood of hubris, he both isolated Huawei from America and gave them an incredibly large area to evolve in by forcing American companies away from China. Huawei had been slowly getting ready for that day for years, but now they had to adapt like their lives depended on it, which is precisely how evolution likes to operate. Thus was born the hitherto mythical third operating system, HarmonyOS. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
_____________________________Before America cut off its own nose to spite its own factories, starting a third OS was folly. How to start a third OS, especially when China had already let Android and iOS behind the Great Firewall, where the majority of the population had adopted them? The network effects of these two entrenched systems were incredibly strong, and it didn’t make market (re: evolutionary) sense to change it. As Paul Simon said, who am I to blow against the wind? That was, until a blowhard from New York rolled in.

LEE CAMP—The video presents a critical and satirical analysis of the ongoing consolidation of American media ownership by a handful of ultra-wealthy billionaires and the detrimental impacts of these monopolies on information dissemination, democracy, and global socio-economic conditions. Host Lee Camp discusses how billionaires such as Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Rupert Murdoch have amassed control over vast swaths of the media landscape, from traditional TV networks and newspapers to social media giants and book distribution. This concentration of media power results in censorship, biased content favoring pro-Trump and pro-Israel narratives, and the suppression of critical independent journalism.

Chris Hedges gives the second talk of his 2025 Australian tour, the Edward Said Memorial Lecture, at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, with an introduction by Mary Kostakidis. Welcome to country by Moogy Sumner. Guest speaker, Samar Sammour. Presented by AFOPA, the Australian Friends of Palestine Association.