Experiments in Futility: Australia’s Teenage Social Media Ban Approaches

by Binoy Kampmark / December 3rd, 2025

The messiness of Australia’s social media ban for those under 16 as part of the Online Safety Act 2021 is becoming more apparent by the day. From December 10 this year, as announced by the commissar-minded eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, “age-restricted social media platforms will have to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from creating or keeping an account.” This, she declares, is “not a ban” but “a delay to having accounts.” Last month, the office formed the opinion “that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, Kick and Reddit are age-restricted platforms.”

Showing a willingness to adapt to, if not outflank the regulations with gusto, curious teenagers are finding other platforms to indulge in. This has precipitated much fuss by the eSafety office to make sure that these discovered outlets are also brought within the scope of the ban. Lemon8, owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance, and the photo sharing app, Yope, have recently piqued the regulator’s interest. This promises to be a perennially futile exercise.

Cyber Safety Solutions founder Susan McLean is clearly on firm ground in dismissing the restrictions as moribund before they even come into effect. “For every single bad thing that has been caused by a banned social media platform,” she attests to the Australian Financial Review, “I can provide you with a platform that is not going to be banned where the same thing has happened.”

McLean also points to another crippling problem: that the age restricting measures can themselves be circumvented on designated platforms. “I’ve seen people scrunch up their face to look older, do full face and make-up tutorials. There are masks you can buy, making your face a darker colour, which apparently makes it harder to tell your age. God knows what’s true and what’s not.”

Then come the qualifications and exemptions that make such a regulation increasingly foolish even before it comes into effect. The commissioner seems of the view that children visiting Australia must have different standards of maturity altogether. They will be exempt from the social media ban when visiting the country, able to lord this fact over any friends of similar age they might make locally. The locals are to be kept childishly pure and incorruptible.

The Digital Freedom Project (DFP) is keen to pursue the legality of the measure in the Australian High Court. The claim is that the laws are disproportionate and breach the constitutional right of freedom of political communication, a right divined by the High Court in a constitution that lacks any express mention of it. While accepting the principle that children need protection from online harms, the DFP asserts that “a measure is only constitutional if, in substance, it burdens political communication no more than is reasonably necessary to achieve that purpose.”

Two 15-year-olds, Noah Jones and Macy Neyland, are named as plaintiffs in the action. “We’re disappointed,” stated Jones, “in a lazy government that blanket bans under-16s rather than investing in programs to help kids be safe on social media.” Neyland, in a waspish mood, feels that, “If you personally think that kids shouldn’t be on social media, stay off it yourself, but don’t impose it on me and my peers.”

The Digital Freedom Project president John Ruddick, a Libertarian member of the New South Wales upper house, further added that the ban shifted the burden of parental responsibility to “unelected bureaucrats” and government apparatchiks. This valid assertion has done little to disabuse the Albanese government of this daft enterprise. “Despite the fact that we are receiving threats and legal challenges by people with ulterior motives,” snorted the Communications Minister Anika Wells in parliament, “the Albanese Labor government remains steadfastly on the side of parents, and not platforms.”

Of interest is whether this implied right extends to those under the age of 16. The implied right, unlike the free speech protections in the United States, is not personally vested in individuals. This legal misnomer acts, rather, as a fetter on excessive parliamentary interference upon discussions and engagements in political communication. Former High Court Chief Justice Robert French, when assessing a South Australian law of similar design, opined that the restriction on content remains “neutral” and “not directed at political speech” even if it might cover it. The stock approach of judges in Australia is to show reluctance in striking down parliament’s will, however mischievous and foolish, as long as the means of doing so are “reasonable and proportionate” for “a legitimate purpose consistent with Australia’s representative democracy.”

This government, much like its predecessors, has insisted on mandatory infantilisation as a principle of public policy. In doing so, it has shown a pathological mistrust not only of children’s intellectual fibre, but the capacity of parents to front up to their nurturing tasks in a digital world. The legislation has left many citizens with the false impression that harms will be redressed in a cogent way, when there is every likelihood that the appetite for social media will remain undiminished. The very idea that children might be enlightened in their use of technology will not feature, while their sheltered ignorance will be treasured.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Iraq warns over rising digital threats to children as internet use surges among young users

Iraqi child playing on games. / Iraqi child playing tablet

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By bna Cairo bureau December 3, 2025

Iraq's government has again stumbled into the argument over the use of digital platforms as it continues to turn the screw on social media, games and virtual platforms. 

The Iraqi Strategic Centre for Human Rights said that the combination of “wide-scale internet use” and the “absence of continuously updated safety measures” within households and institutions has created an increasingly unsafe digital environment for minors.

The Baghdad-based centre warned that global data paints a disturbing picture of the amount of time spent on screens, which Iraqi households have struggled to deal with in recent years. Historically, Arab governments have not engaged in such debates, but calls from some families about the use of specific platforms and games have raised concerns across different communities. 

According to UNICEF data, when a child goes online, every half second shows just how quickly young users are being swept into a digital space where predators, extortion and manipulation are widespread risks. It cited recent studies indicating that more than 300mn children worldwide face digital threats annually, ranging from online sexual exploitation and extortion to cyberbullying and coercive digital behaviour.

Concerns have deepened since the government announced in October 2025 a ban on electronic games such as PUBG, Fortnite and Roblox, arguing they encourage violence and undermine childhood well-being. 

The Ministry of Interior said the games had become “a threat to social security” and “a waste of children’s and adolescents’ money and time”. The move is part of a broader campaign to curb products seen as harmful to young people, following the earlier ban on the Labubu doll. 

The backdrop is a steadily tightening digital landscape. In 2024, Iraq expanded its internet restrictions, blocking several major websites, including the Internet Archive and 4chan.

A Ministry of Communications report that same year found that 62%  of Iraqi households do not activate any form of parental control on children’s devices, leaving young users significantly more exposed to online risks.

The Strategic Centre drew attention to the most common threats to Iraqi children, including cyberbullying and its psychological impact, online luring and exploitation, theft of personal data due to weak privacy settings, and exposure to harmful or age-inappropriate content that can influence behaviour, mental health and social development.

It also noted a growing number of cases involving hacked accounts caused by password sharing and poor digital security awareness.

The organisation said parents and communities must play a central role in updating protective tools, something that was not the case until recently in many Iraqi households with kids often in their bedrooms without supervision.

Psychologist Faleh Al-Quraishi warned that children are increasingly shifting “from social beings to virtual beings”, describing heavy screen use as “screen addiction”, a condition he compared to chemical dependency. Excessive exposure, he said, pushes children “into a cycle of anxiety, tension and social isolation”, contributing to declining academic performance.

"Without open conversation between parents and children about online risks, minors are left highly exposed to dangerous content,” he added.

The human rights body urged the Iraqi government, parliament and relevant agencies to adopt a national digital-child-protection strategy that covers legislation, prevention and monitoring. It called on authorities to accelerate the passage of a long-delayed Child Protection Law, integrate digital literacy into school curricula from the primary level and tighten penalties for online blackmail and exploitation of minors.

Among its recommendations were the creation of a national hotline for reporting incidents, enforcing child-privacy obligations on telecom operators and social-media platforms, and strengthening cooperation with UNICEF and international organisations to track emerging risks and update protective policies.

 The UN’s Financing Crisis: Who Pays, Who Doesn’t, and Why China’s Delays Matter

The UN is being systematically starved of funds while the money goes to the insatiable military. If this is not short-sighted, irresponsible and shameful, what is?

by Jan Oberg / December 3rd, 2025

The United Nations is facing one of the gravest financial crises in its history. According to the UN Secretariat, by late 2025, only 145 of its 193 member states had paid their assessed contributions in full. That leaves 48 countries behind on their obligations, with total arrears amounting to $1.87 billion. The consequences are severe: the UN has announced that its 2026 budget will be cut by $577 million, a reduction of 15 per cent, and nearly 19 per cent of staff positions will be eliminated. According to Al Jazeera on December 2, 2025.

It happens in a world where all UN members in 2025 spent close to US$ 3000 000 000 000 on arms that create more problems than they solve! This is the immoral global proportion between nonviolence and violence. If maintained, it is extremely hard to see how humanity shall survive.

This ought to create larger headlines in media across the globe than anything having to do with, say, Ukraine or what Trump wrote last night. It doesn’t. It is yet another example of what I have called the world’s conflict and peace illiteracy: People to not know, or value, the world’s most important peace and development organisation that states in its Article 1 that peace shall be established by peaceful means and only when everything has been tried and found without effect can the UN go in and use military force where needed.

This situation is not the result of one or two small states failing to pay. It is driven by the largest economies and most powerful members, whose arrears dwarf those of smaller countries. The imbalance is stark: while member states collectively spend 100 times more on weapons than on the UN’s entire system, they fail to meet even the modest obligations required to keep the organisation functioning.

This table shows clearly that the UN’s financial crisis is not caused by the poorest members. It is the largest economies — the United States, Russia, China, and Mexico — that account for the overwhelming majority of arrears. Smaller states are formally listed as “in arrears” under Article 19 of the UN Charter, which means they risk losing their vote in the General Assembly.

China’s chronic late payment

The United States and Russia are the largest outright debtors, but who would expect them to live up to their obligations vis-a-vis the United Nations? That said, China’s role is distinctive and enigmatic. China is the second-largest contributor to the UN regular budget, assessed at about 15 per cent of the total, or roughly $480 million per year. Unlike Venezuela or Afghanistan, China does eventually pay its dues. The problem is that it pays them months late, often at the very end of the calendar year.

2021: Paid about 2 months late.
2022: Payment confirmed on 23 November 2022, covering regular budget and peacekeeping.
2023: Payment made, but not within the 30‑day due window; UN financial reports show “lesser collections” and the need for liquidity management because of late payments.
2024: Paid nearly 10 months late, final instalment on 27 December 2024.
2025: Pattern of late payment continues, contributing to the UN’s $1.87 billion arrears crisis; as of October 29, still unpaid.

This pattern is not trivial. Because China’s contribution is so large, its late payments create liquidity crises for the UN with, as is seen above, grave long-term consequences. The organisation cannot plan its budget, hire staff, or sustain operations when one of its largest funders withholds payment until the last possible moment.

The enigmatic part is that no other country emphasises the present and future importance of international law, the UN and its Charter as much and as frequently as China does. TFF and I have always emphasised and applauded that; it is a credible and fundamental building block in China’s peace-oriented foreign policies and its various, very welcome, Initiative Documents that sketch out the possible futures of the world, its security and governance. This does not harmonise well with the above-mentioned payment statistics.

Consequences for the UN

The consequences of these arrears and delays are spelt out in the UN’s own announcements and reported widely, including in Al Jazeera’s coverage on December 2, 2025:

• Budget cuts: $577 million will be removed from the 2026 budget.
• Staff reductions: Nearly 19 per cent of UN staff will be eliminated.
• Program impact: Peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, and climate programs will be scaled back.
• Credibility: The UN’s ability to act as the backbone of multilateralism is undermined by the very states that claim to support it.

The irony is striking. China, Russia, and others frequently invoke the UN Charter in speeches, presenting it as the foundation of both multilateralism and the emerging multipolar world order. Yet their financial behaviour undermines the institution they claim to champion.

If we want a strong UN and an efficient multi-nodal/polar future for the common good of humanity, the perversion of funding the UN at $1 to every $100 for Militarism must change and change now. And UN members must pay all their dues and do so on time. And to get there, it is time to start a global future discussion, rather than continuing the boring geopolitical-military discourse that offers no solutions but stares at history, today’s events and interpretations of them.

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Jan Oberg is a peace researcher, art photographer, and Director of The Transnational (TFF) where this article first appeared. Reach him at: oberg@transnational.org. Read other articles by Jan.

The Magic Begging Bowl

The Failure of Success: Part 1

by Media Lens / December 3rd, 2025

‘One day a beggar knocked on the doors of a great king. By chance, the king himself opened the door. He saw the beggar: the beggar was not an ordinary beggar, he was almost luminous. He had such grace, such beauty, such a mysterious aura, that even the king felt jealous. He asked, “What do you want?” still pretending – “I have not taken any note of you” – “What do you want?”

‘The beggar showed the king his begging bowl and he said, “I would like it to be filled.”

‘The king said, “That’s all? With what do you want it to be filled?”

‘The beggar said, “Anything will do, but the condition is that you have to fill it; otherwise, don’t try.”

‘It was a challenge to the king. He said, “What do you mean by it? Can’t I fill this small begging bowl? And you don’t say with what.”

‘The beggar said, “That is irrelevant. Anything will do, even pebbles, stones, but fill it! The condition is: I will not leave the door if you start filling it; unless it is filled, I will remain here.”

‘The king ordered his prime minister to fill the begging bowl with diamonds; he had millions of diamonds: “This beggar has to be shown that he is encountering a king!” But soon the king became aware that he had been deceived. The begging bowl was as extraordinary as the beggar, more so in fact: anything dropped into it would simply be gone, would disappear. It remained empty. The treasures were thrown into it, but they all disappeared.

‘By the evening the whole capital had gathered. The king was now becoming almost desperate: the diamonds finished, then the gold, and then the gold was finished, then the silver, and then the silver was finished…. The sun was setting, and the king’s sun had also set. His whole treasury was empty, and the begging bowl was still the same, empty, not even a trace! It swallowed all his kingdom. It was too much!

‘Now the king knew that he had been trapped. He fell at the feet of the beggar and said, “Forgive me. I was wrong to accept the challenge. This begging bowl is not an ordinary begging bowl. You deceived me – there is some magic in it.”

‘And the beggar laughed and he said, “There is no magic in it: I have made it out of the skull of a man.”

‘The king said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean? If it is just made out of the skull of a man, how can it go on swallowing my whole kingdom?”

‘And the beggar said, “That’s what is happening everywhere: NOBODY is ever satisfied. The begging bowl in the head always remains empty. It is an ordinary skull, just like everybody else’s.”’ (Osho, ‘The Guest – Talks on Kabir’, 1981, p. 223-224)

World Cup Car Wash

In 2003, Ben Cohen was part of the only England team to have won the Rugby World Cup. Cohen commented on that great triumph: ‘It meant everything, winning a World Cup.’

It is easy to imagine the thrill of being part of that team when Jonny Wilkinson nailed that drop goal in the dying seconds of the match!

We can imagine the euphoria, knowing that the world is falling at your feet, knowing that people will forever say: ‘That guy won the World Cup!’

Remarkably, one might think, the magic begging bowl in Cohen’s head sees it differently:

‘The bigger issue for me was that I just didn’t get a skill set or a life skill, and now I think, well, OK, winning a World Cup doesn’t really bring me anything. It’s not like it’s a degree, you know.’

This is pretty astonishing: winning the World Cup ‘didn’t really bring… anything’… unlike a degree! It echoes a comment made by hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst who helped win the football World Cup for England in 1966:

‘There was a tremendous feeling of anti-climax when we got home… I cut the lawn because I hadn’t been home for ages. Then I washed the car. It was pretty much like any other Sunday afternoon… It might sound a bit pretentious, but for me it had been another football match, albeit a very important one… It’s just like another day at the office. People may find that hard to believe but that’s how I recall it, and so do many of my teammates at the time.’ (Geoff Hurst, 1966 and All That – My Autobiography, Headline Book Publishing, 2001, p.18)

Cohen’s regret: ‘I probably wish I’d got a skill set and a steady job.’

To his credit, he understands how his begging bowl would have responded to that course of action:

‘Then I probably would have looked the other way and thought “I wish I could have been a sportsman”. But the reality is I would probably rather have been over [on the nonathletic side], because it’s going to suit me for the rest of my life, instead of a portion of my life. When you sort of get [to retirement] you think: “I’m in my 30s, who am I?” And at that point you think, I am lonely here, this is sink or swim.’

He added:

‘We’re all in a huddle and it’s happy days, “yeah great, we can do this”. Then you turn around 180 degrees and it’s f—— lonely. You go, “I’m out on my own, where do I go now?” And then you think “oh s—, am I fit for purpose?”. That whole journey needs to be a transitional phase into coping skills and deconditioning into civvy street.’

Being part of a World Cup-winning rugby squad sounds like a life lived at the exact opposite end of the spectrum from ‘f…… lonely’. It sounds like the ultimate social life: life-long friends bonded by glory, limitless grateful fans and admirers.

Spare a thought for golfing great Scottie Scheffler, who has been world number one for a total of 167 weeks and whose begging bowl has received total career earnings in excess of $195m. Echoing Hurst, after winning this year’s US PGA Championship, Scheffler asked:

‘Showing up at the Masters every year it’s like, “Why do I want to win this golf tournament so badly? Why do I want to win The Open Championship so badly?”’

His sobering answer:

‘I don’t know because if I win it’s going to be awesome for two minutes, then we’re going to get to the next week and it’s, “hey, you won two majors this year; how important is it for you to win the FedEx Cup play-offs?”

‘It feels like you work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament for like a few minutes. It only lasts a few minutes, that kind of euphoric feeling.’

Doubtless to the horror of his corporate sponsors, Scheffler said he would not urge people to follow his path:

‘I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world because what’s the point? This is not a fulfilling life. It’s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart.

‘There are a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfil them in life, and you get there, you get to number one in the world, and they’re like, “what’s the point?”’

From the heart of corporate media Mordor, the New York Times described ‘this version of Scheffler’ as ‘Nihilist Scottie’.

Before last year’s Paris Olympics, Scheffler had already broken hearts on Madison Avenue when he was asked how he felt about the potential glory of winning a gold medal and joining the pantheon of Olympic greats. His reply:

‘I don’t focus much on legacy. I don’t look too far into the future. Ultimately, we’ll be forgotten.’

Ronnie O’Sullivan, Nihilist Ronnie, has won the World Snooker Championship seven times. Widely considered the greatest player ever to have wielded a snooker cue, this was O’Sullivan’s answer to the question, ‘Worst life choice you ever made?’

‘Taking up snooker. In some ways, I wish I had a different job. I’m fortunate in many ways, because it’s been good to me, but I wish I’d been good at something else. Something more educational, maybe a scientist or something more interesting. I don’t think my job is interesting. It’s more of an entertainment, more of a brutality sport. I’d rather have had [sports psychiatrist] Steve Peters’ life. Or to inspire people in a different way, like helping to cure cancer.”’

While you and I were gazing out of office windows dreaming of being the best in the world at something, Cohen and O’Sullivan were dreaming of sitting in an office contributing to the public weal. For Hurst, it was ‘just like another day at the office’. Clearly, ‘this begging bowl is not an ordinary begging bowl… there is some magic in it’.

‘Signatures Made on Water’

The same discontent has, of course, haunted generations of tennis stars.

World number one and teenage heartthrob Björn Borg bagged five Wimbledon titles in a row, before being brutally dethroned in 1981 by arch-rival John McEnroe, who defeated him in both the Wimbledon and US Open finals. Devastated, Borg simply walked away from the sport, aged 26: ‘All I could think was how miserable my life had become.’

After retiring, Borg twice came close to dying from drug overdoses: ‘alcohol, drugs, pills – my preferred ways of self-medication’.

Presumably, becoming number one on the planet by committing regicide on the guy previously deemed the greatest ever player was enough to fill McEnroe’s begging bowl. Alas, he wrote of 1984, his greatest year in tennis:

‘Except for the French, and one tournament just before the Open in which I had been basically over-tennised, I won every tournament I played in 1984: thirteen out of fifteen. Eighty-two out of eighty-five matches. No one had ever had a year like that in tennis before. No one has since.

‘But on October 1, 1984, I was standing in the Portland airport, waiting to board a flight to L.A. for a week off, and suddenly I thought, I’m the greatest tennis player who ever lived – why am I so empty inside?’ (John McEnroe, Serious, Hachette Digital e-book, 2008, p. 228)

As discussed:

‘NOBODY is ever satisfied. The begging bowl in the head always remains empty.’

Having traumatised Borg in 1981, McEnroe was himself tortured by an emotional outburst that cost him a chance to win the 1984 French Open final against Ivan Lendl. McEnroe had been leading by two sets to love, sailing to victory:

‘It was the worst loss of my life, a devastating defeat: Sometimes it still keeps me up nights. It’s even tough for me now to do the commentary at the French – I’ll often have one or two days when I literally feel sick to my stomach just at being there and thinking about that match. Thinking of what I threw away, and how different my life would’ve been if I’d won.’ (McEnroe, p. 83)

Why did it mean so much so many years later? Who cares about a tennis match that took place in 1984?

‘I had two Wimbledons and three Opens. A French title, followed by my third Wimbledon, would have given me that final, complete thing that I don’t have now – a legitimate claim as possibly the greatest player of all time.’

This was fantasy at the time, even more so now. McEnroe ended his career with just seven Grand Slam titles. Since then, his achievements have been dwarfed by Novak Djokovic who has won 24, Rafael Nadal who won 22 and Roger Federer, 20.

Thus, the cruelty of the begging bowl: while the euphoria of any success quickly vanishes, leaving us empty, our failures burn and blister for years and decades. Osho captured it exactly:

‘Your pleasures were nothing, just signatures made on water.

‘And your pain was engraved on granite.

‘And you suffered all that pain for these signatures on water.’

McEnroe was quickly eclipsed by big-serving Boris Becker, who went on to serve 231 days of a two-and-a-half-year sentence in Britain’s HMP Wandsworth and HMP Huntercombe prisons. Jailed for crimes relating to his 2017 bankruptcy, Becker identified deeper causes when asked:

‘Have there been times when you wish you hadn’t won Wimbledon when you were seventeen?’

Becker replied:

‘Yeah, of course. If you remember any other wunderkind, they usually don’t make it to 50 because of the trials and tribulations that come after…

‘I’m happy to have won three [Wimbledon titles], but maybe 17 was too young. I was still a child. I was too comfortable. I had too much money. Nobody told me “No” – everything was possible. In hindsight, that’s the recipe for disaster.’

Thus, the magic begging bowl’s reverse spin on St. Augustine’s famous plea: ‘Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet!’

Grant me everything I ever dreamed of, but not yet!

In similar vein, the life of golfing megastar Tiger Woods was brought low by partying, single vehicle car crashes and sex scandals. Woods confessed:

‘I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn’t have to go far to find them. I was wrong. I was foolish.’

Pop star Robbie Williams’ discography includes seven UK No. 1 singles, with all but one of his 14 studio albums reaching No. 1. Williams gained a Guinness World Record in 2006 for selling 1.6 million concert tickets in a single day. The BBC reported that Williams ‘paints a pretty poisonous portrait’ of his time in the band Take That:

‘There’s a pattern – boys join a boyband, boyband becomes huge, boys get sick. And I don’t think anybody gets to escape that.

‘I don’t know what it is completely about fame that warps. I just know that it does. I know that young fame, in particular, is corrosive and toxic. It should come with a health warning.’

Like Becker, Williams believes ‘young fame’ is a key problem. In reality, the problem is that no amount of fame, at any age, will appease the craving and discontent of the magic begging bowl. Biographer Lynn Haney commented on the failure of ‘success’ more generally:

‘Hollywood is filled with the most unhappy success stories in the world. Guys and gals who are making fortunes, being pampered and petted by any number of people, and basking in the idolatry of movie fans all over the world still manage to find in this pleasant situation big tears of sadness, moments of deep depression and that hangdog look that usually goes with complete failure. Why this happens, I’ll never understand.’ (Lynn Haney, Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life, Robson, 2002, p. 186)

If we are tempted to believe that the begging bowl can be filled with virtuous deeds, we might recall that the mysterious beggar in the story warns the king that, pebbles, stones or diamonds, it makes no difference what is thrown in. Award-winning photojournalist Don McCullin, veteran of numerous wars, commented:

‘“It’s been a cesspit, really, my life… I feel as if I’ve been over-rewarded, and I definitely feel uncomfortable about that, because it’s been at the expense of other people’s lives.” But he has been the witness to atrocity, I point out, and that’s important. “Yes,” he says, uncertainly, “but, at the end of the day, it’s done absolutely no good at all. Look at Ukraine. Look at Gaza. I haven’t changed a solitary thing. I mean it. I feel as if I’ve been riding on other people’s pain over the last 60 years, and their pain hasn’t helped prevent this kind of tragedy. We’ve learned nothing.” It makes him despair.’

Steven Bartlett, host of The Diary of a CEO, which Spotify ranked fifth in its list of the top five most popular podcasts globally in 2024, having had more than one billion views and listens, said:

‘Entrepreneurs like me get a lot of likes and followers when we tell people to quit their jobs and chase their dreams. But here is the context that we nearly always miss. Entrepreneurship can be really, really boring… If you’re lucky enough to be successful, the problems will get bigger, not smaller…You will probably work 3x the hours you do now, have 10x the stress and a tiny probability of significant success. A recent survey found 87.7% of founders deal with mental health issues. That’s not a bug. It’s a feature of entrepreneurship.’

Bartlett’s conclusion:

‘You’ll struggle to switch off. Ever. Your phone will probably become a prison. And here’s the punchline: If you succeed, it all gets harder. More money = more complexity. More growth = more anxiety. More success = more people depending on you.’

Duff McKagan, the bassist in the globally famous band Guns N’ Roses, commented:

‘Survival means you live long enough to watch the world change, to watch the people you loved drift away, to watch your own body slow down while your heart still wants to live like it’s 1987.

‘I miss the days when everything felt infinite – the music, the friendships, the laughter backstage, even the chaos. Now, those moments feel like ghosts haunting me, reminding me of what once was.’

Bruce Springsteen wrote a song, ‘Glory Days’, about begging bowls haunted by the past in this way, a form of suffering that is written all over the faces of fading stars like Borg and Woods.

As McKagan suggests, even if we were globally recognised as ‘The Greatest’ we would still be tormented by the comparison between who we are ‘now’ and who we were ‘then’.

Conclusion

In reality, of course, the begging bowl of the human mind is not made toxic by magic; it is made toxic by thoughts of how our lives are lacking in some way. We missed some great opportunity – the great love, the great prize, the great achievement. Or we succeeded, loved and lost, and now have ‘nothing’. Those of us who never approach the lofty summits of achievement described above are no different – our happiness is also swallowed up by thoughts of what ‘could’ or ‘should’ be different.

In Part 2, we will discuss an antidote to the suffering of the human mind supplied by spiritual teacher Byron Katie’s strategy of self-inquiry, ‘The Work’. Strange and counter intuitive as it may seem at first sight, the fact is that it works.

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Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The most recent Media Lens book, Propaganda Blitz by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2018 by Pluto Press. Read other articles by Media Lens, or visit Media Lens's website.

Conditions Are Ripe for a Resistance Counter-Offensive

by Ted Glick / December 3rd, 2025

It’s been over ten long months that the forces of democracy have been on the defensive, doing our best to withstand the many and various assaults on us on issue after issue, but the tide is turning:

-Trump’s polling numbers keep going down, at 36% positive and 60% negative in the latest Gallup Poll;

-Four weeks after Democratic Party electoral victories all over the country on November 4, it’s possible as I write that, today, a Democrat running for Congress in a special election in Tennessee could win despite, in the 2024 election, the Republican candidate winning by a 22% margin of victory;

-Long-time MAGA leader Margaret Taylor Green is resigning from Congress and publicly criticizing Trump on health care, the Epstein issue and more, with the likelihood that other Republican House members will follow her lead;

-The Epstein sex trafficking crisis is not going away!

-Trump’s “Justice” Department’s indictments against James Comey and Letitia James have been thrown out by a US District Court judge;

-Congressional Republicans are on the defensive over what to do about the health care crisis, overall, with the specific problem of huge increases in premiums, doubling, tripling or more, for millions of people by the end of the year; this was one of the main reasons for Green’s resignation;

-And now comes the Caribbean motorboat revelations about Pete Hegseth giving the illegal order to “kill everybody” on those boats even if a boat has been destroyed and there are survivors. True to form, exposed as they have been, rats like Hegseth are deserting a sinking ship by trying to shift the blame to a career military admiral.

Remember that it was Joe McCarthy in the 1950’s attacking the US military that was the beginning of the end for his McCarthyite repressive campaign.

There are probably some on the political Left who would counsel that we allow all of this to keep unfolding and not “rock the sinking boat,” just let it take its course, but I don’t agree at all.

We should do just the opposite, consciously up our game, keep broadening out our resistance movement and make plans for 2026 to be the year that Trump and the MAGA’s are decisively defeated and the House and the Senate come under Democratic and progressive independent (Bernie, others) control. Like it or not, that has to be our north star for the next 11 months, as we keep up the resistance to ICE and Border Control raids and take action on all of the many other issues our peoples are dealing with.

That issue-oriented activity will strengthen the electoral campaigns of genuine progressives in the Democratic primaries running against corporatists or anti-Left centrists, as well as serious, tactically smart, progressive independent campaigns.

It will be essential that we do what we did so effectively over this past year as far as taking it to the streets. We need national days of coordinated local actions, which began in 2025 on February 5 with the 50501 actions in just about every state capitol. Those actions kept building throughout the year up to the seven million of us coming out in 2,600 local actions in every state on the second No Kings day October 18.

January 19, 2026, one year after Trump took office and the federal Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, would be a very good day to initiate this continuing campaign of nationally coordinated street action.

2026 will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which offers us lots of possibilities.

We do need to be up front about the mixed reality of that historic revolution against British colonialism, the reality of European-American enslavement of Africans and violent theft of land lived on by indigenous nations for thousands of years. But it is a fact that the American Revolution helped to inspire anti-colonial and anti-monarchy revolutions in France, Haiti, South America and elsewhere. Indeed, when the Vietnamese revolutionaries in 1946 put forward their call for independence from French colonialism, they quoted the US Declaration of Independence.

We should have no illusions that the MAGA’s as a whole are going to see the light and stop with their repressive and regressive efforts, though there’s no question that some of them already are moving away from Trump and there are major internal rifts. This is another important fact about the crisis the Republicans and fascists are in.

As bad as 2025 has been, 2026 can be very different, if we all stay strong and keep consciously building the resistance movement in all its many different aspects. 2026 can  end up being a happy, a joyous, successful new year of popular, nonviolent uprising for justice, democracy, peace and defense of our threatened ecosystems.

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Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org. Read other articles by Ted, or visit Ted's website.