Today
I have
very strong feelings.
Today I feel
Arab.
Today I feel
African.
Today I feel
Gay.
And uh, I feel this
because I know what it means to be discriminated.
As a child
I had red hair.
And I had these red -- how you call them?
Freckles
Frickles?
Freckles
Sorry?
Freckles
-- freckles.
You see I don't even know the term.
Who is actually caring
about the workers?
Nobody cares.
Oh hello.
Welcome to System Fail,
the show where radicalization is a two-way street.
A New York City heiress
says she was brainwashed by her elite liberal college.
And her mother had to pay over $300 a day
to deprogram her.
I say brainwashing
and I don't say it lightly, because I really do feel
that my thoughts weren't my own.
I became completely brainwashed into believing
that I was oppressed
by our “toxic patriarchal society.”
You know, that this country is “racist.”
It's a woke indoctrination.
I had to unlearn my four years of woke-ism
Feminist just means wanting equal rights.
Fight the enemy within.
Fight the bourgeois conditioning.
Just because I may present more femme,
doesn't mean I'm any less they/them.
Kill the pig. Kill the pig.
How did you get better?
By watching five minute PragerU videos
online for free.
She s now the development director for PragerU.
Hahahaha.... amazing.
And if you wanna save the $300 a day
to deprogram someone from being woke...
Watch FOX.
I am your host, Dee Dos.
And for three years now, humans have been struggling
with the microbial, social and geopolitical fallout
of the SARS-2 Coronavirus, commonly known as COVID-19.
Keep your distance
and wear a mask.
...dead bodies being wheeled in procession
from a hospital in Brooklyn.
...more than 50 million positive cases worldwide...
More testing is needed.
Many countries are
scrambling to buy the exact same chemicals.
We're all in this together.
As long-time viewers may remember,
I myself was promoted to subMedia news anchor,
back in 2020,
to spare my comrade bosses
from having to share one another's oxygen.
While the origin of COVID-19 remains a matter of vigorous debate,
Obviously we know it's a coronavirus.
We know that it's a strain that partly came from a bat.
You’ve been brainwashed.
I think this was all planned by the Democratic party.
the first confirmed case was recorded on November 17, 2019,
in a 55 year old medical patient from China's Hubei province.
Since then, the pandemic has killed more than
18 million humans,
devastated national healthcare systems,
disrupted manufacturing and global supply chains,
and ravaged the international economy.
It has also radically transformed everyday life,
worsened a preexisting mental health crisis
and served as a lightning rod for political divisions
in the so-called culture war.
You mask your child, you re a child abuser.
They're trying to rape our children with this poison.
Any opportunity that humans once had
to eradicate the virus
was dashed by politicians’ early decision
to prioritize pharmaceutical corporations’
intellectual property rights
over universal access to vaccines.
And as the scientific consensus has hardened around this reality,
a new normal has slowly set in.
Just given up.
This is all of us right now.
Nothing matters.
Since the onset of the Omicron variant last winter,
deaths and serious hospitalizations
have fallen sharply in many parts of the world.
even as overall rates of infection
have remained high.
Seniors, humans with compromised immune systems,
and those with long COVID symptoms,
have been further marginalized
by a public eager to move beyond mask mandates,
school closures
and quarantine measures.
It's believed that COVID-19 will leave behind
a devastating legacy in the years to come.
La la la la la la I can't hear you.
In the strongholds of western individualism,
politicians and public health officials
have stopped tracking daily infections,
and have given up on even basic containment measures.
The pandemic is over.
The situation is quite different in China,
where authorities continue to enforce
the strictest public health measures in the world.
Millions under strict and prolonged lockdown.
Police in hazmat suits clashed with residents.
People testing positive still face quarantine or hospital.
Please comply with covid restrictions.
Control you soul's desire for freedom.
Do not open the window or sing.
[Sings in Italian]
Once the subject of glowing praise
from world health officials
and western leftists with Deng Xiaoping profile pictures,
The Chinese Communist Party is not trying to eliminate
the Uighur ethnic minority
- who are all extremely happy all the time.
China's so-called Zero-COVID policy
is now buckling under the strain of the more
highly transmissible Omicron variant.
Low-quality vaccines, and a much lower case-count
has left the Chinese population with far fewer antibodies
than their international counterparts.
This has forced the state to double-down
on its strict containment regime
of mass testing,
contact tracing,
travel restrictions,
and draconian lockdowns
of apartment blocks,neighbourhoods,
cities, and entire regions.
Schools and factories in locked-down areas
have implemented strict quarantine measures
requiring students and workers to live on-site,
isolated from their peers, and unable to go outside,
sometimes for months on end.
Those who test positive are held
in makeshift quarantine facilities.
Complaints of food and medicine shortages
have been rampant,
leading to hundreds
of isolated protests and small-scale riots.
We're starving to death.
We don't know how long this situation will last
We don't wanna starve to death!
In recent weeks,
pent up anger over the situation
has exploded into the largest wave of protests
that the country has seen in decades.
Back in October,
after rumours of an outbreak began to spread,
tens of thousands of workers staged dramatic escapes
from the FoxConn factory in Zhengzhou,
a sprawling industrial complex
that employs more than 200,000 workers,
and produces more than 70% of the global supply of iPhones.
In November, the company began
offering large bonuses to fill these vacancies.
But the new hires, mostly poor migrant labourers,
were soon informed that these bonuses
would be delayed.
On the evening of November 22nd,
these enraged workers took over the complex,
pushing out local party officials and security personnel.
Over the next 24 hours,
they defended the occupied factory
from lines of police in white hazmat suits,
producing some of the most surreal riot porn
in recent memory.
On day three, the insurgent workers
were offered more than three months salary
to stop protesting and leave the factory.
Their short-lived revolt is estimated to have caused
a global shortage of 6 million iPhone 14 Pros
in the lead up to Christmas,
wiping billions of dollars off Apple's stock price.
On November 24th, an electrical fire
broke out in a high-rise
located in a predominantly-Uighur neighbourhood in Urumqi,
the capital of Xinjiang province.
At least 10 people were killed.
Following a botched attempt to fight the blaze,
it emerged that many residents had been unable
to flee the building,
as their doors had been
chained shut to enforce a lock-down,
in place since August 10th.
Public outrage spread quickly.
The next day, Urumqi was engulfed in protests.
In Shanghai, a large vigil
transformed into clashes with police.
Over the next several days, demonstrations broke out
across most major cities, including:
Beijing,
Wuhan,
Hangzhou,
Chendu,
Jinan,
Nanjing,
Lanzhou
and Xi'an.
Meanwhile, riots erupted in Guangzhou and Chongching,
with residents taking to the streets en masse
to defy local lockdowns and fight cops.
The protests spread to at least 79 universities,
with students in Beijing demanding
an end to Zero-COVID and state censorship,
and pushing back against claims that the protests
were being controlled by foreign agents.
Can we leave the country? Or can we go on foreign internet?
Neither!
How are they meant to communicate with us?
They can't!
Where are these foreign forces from?
From the moon!
We just want freedom.
Initially caught off guard by the protests,
the Chinese Communist Party moved quickly
to re-assert control,
announcing a crackdown on dissent
and a new targeted vaccination program
for seniors,
which some see as a first step
towards loosening the Zero-COVID policy.
Whether this will be enough to ease tensions
remains to be seen.
Given the widespread display of anger and frustration
at the Zero-COVID policy in recent days,
is China thinking about ending it?
Can you repeat the question?
And in other news,
the tech world continues to reel
from Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter.
The world's richest man has been showing us
how he will run one of the world's biggest social media platforms.
He seems to be largely making this up as it goes along.
It's absolute chaos.
Twitter is, was, and will always be
a dumpster fire.
It's my fault 100%.
Since assuming control of the social media giant,
the world's richest man has laid off more than half its staff,
up-ended its user verification and content moderation policies,
and reinstated a number of banned accounts.
Every human being has something of value
that they brought to the table...
especially Hitler!
Well players... that didn't last long.
As part of his ongoing crusade against “woke culture”,
Musk has also suspended a number of American anti-fascist
and anarchist accounts,
including the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club,
and the well-known anarchist publisher, Crimethinc.
Incredibly, Musk has been guided in this purge by right-wing hack
and make-believe journalist, Andy Ngo.
I've been trying to raise attention to those who are higher up in at Twitter
that that platform is the primary platform that are used by
far-left violent extremists who organize to promote violence
and then to raise funds for criminal suspects.
As Twitter continues its inevitable slide into a virtual hellscape
of obnoxious red-pilled trolls, and sanctimonious snitches,
a notable silver lining has been the migration
of many anarchists, antifascists and anti-colonial militants
to decentralized, open-source and federated alternatives
like Mastodon.
Oh yeah, stay of Twitter.
I did not expect that.
Hmm.
We have now reached the end of this episode
of System Fail.
Much like other Mastodon servers,
Kolektiva.social has seen a massive spike in new accounts
in the past month.
If you'd like to support
independent anarchist media infrastructure,
consider making a donation at kolektiva.info/donate.
You can support subMedia by buying some gear,
making a one-time donation,
or signing up to be a monthly sustainer
on our website, sub.media.
A huge thank you to our latest sustainers,
Karen, Teresa, Dominik, Daniel and Derek.
Be sure to follow us on your favourite
corporate data-mining platform of choice,
or on federated social media platforms
like Mastodon or PeerTube, by searching for subMedia.
Or better yet...
sign up to our mailing list to get
each new episode delivered directly to your inbox.
Godspeed, humans.