by NICK DOWSON

Nick Dowson imagines a different world of online communities that puts our needs first.

My first interaction with online social platforms – other than email – was on MSN Messenger. My memories of it sit alongside the unforgettable tones of dial-up internet and the bonsai kittens hoax.

The program had an unadorned interface and text-based, mostly one-on-one, chats. There was no public posting, or algorithms (mathematical rulesets) determining who read what.

When MySpace, and later Facebook, came along we mistook their novelty for fun. But, fast forward not so many years and the love affair with social media has quickly soured – save for a brief interlude where, having copied from tools developed by social movements, Twitter took credit for a swathe of revolutions and protests.

It shouldn’t have taken Elon Musk’s ego to prove that having the world’s digital public spheres – core sites for democracy and social life in our age – controlled by a handful of rich men was untenable.

From service providers to the fibre optic cables, the internet has been handed over wholesale to corporations.

Its ills flow from that: social media’s monetization through the attention economy means data mining and the nurturing of users’ insecurities; advertising fuels consumerism; and platforms are incentivized to favour the spreading of far right messages – after all, outrage is seductive.

So, what would it look like if we called time on Big Tech’s failed experiment?

A better social media would need to be decentralized – away from the US stock markets and men like Mark Zuckerberg, on whose watch images of breastfeeding have been banned as misogyny spreads. As well as avoiding a single point of failure (or censorship), this would help with other goals: community ownership, and democratic control, would be facilitated by having many smaller, perhaps more local, sites.

Existing social media giants must be brought into public (and transnational) ownership – in a way that hands power to citizens, not governments. But they should also be broken up, using existing anti-monopoly rules.

New Internationalist for more

by INGRID CHAHINE

The Israeli occupation army set a precedent on Thursday as it struck the Lebanese University’s Hadath campus, killing Dr. Hussein Bazzi, director of the Faculty of Sciences, and professor Mortada Srour, while injuring at least thirteen others who were in the faculty’s courtyard. Previous Israeli operations in Lebanon have targeted residential areas, medical personnel, and civilian infrastructure, but this is the first confirmed strike on academics inside university grounds during the ongoing war, following the killing of Mr. Mohammad Reda Fadlallah, director of USAL University in Haret Hreik.

Condemnations quickly followed. Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported statements from colleagues, faculty associations, the Dean of the Faculty of Education, the Ministry of Education, and the Lebanese University administration, mourning martyrs Bazzi and Srour and thanking them for their remarkable contribution to science. There was no official statement, however, highlighting that the Israeli strike damaged a university already suffering from chronic underfunding, or rather systematic institutional weakening.

Parallel to these official responses, a coordinated strategy unfolded on social media, where users circulated a photograph claiming to show Dr. Hussein Bazzi standing alongside martyred Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Akil. The image was first published by Avichai Adraei, the Arabic-language spokesperson for the Israeli occupation army. Shortly after, the Lebanese University’s presidency issued a statement addressing the photograph, explaining that the claim that the person in the photo is the martyr Dr. Hussein Bazzi is incorrect. The statement noted that the image originated from enemy sources and that the identification remained unconfirmed speculation.

The occupation framed the targeting of academic and civilian infrastructure as an expanding campaign to “pressure the Lebanese government” who is reportedly “unable to disarm Hezbollah”.

Still, the bombing of academic institutions and the killing of faculty members, theorists, professors and students, follows a pattern established long before the recent zionist genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in 2023. The [ongoing] genocide, however, consolidated it further during that period, particularly with the level of impunity exhibited by the occupation and the international community vis-à-vis live streamed violations of all laws and morals. According to a January 2024 article by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has killed more than 94 university professors in Gaza since October 2023 along with teachers, and thousands of students. That figure has since increased of course, particularly when IOF attacks on the Strip deliberately continued to target academic, scientific, and intellectual figures as well as institutions. Before their demolition, some universities and schools were also converted to detention facilities and military barracks according to the article.

The Georgetown Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine documented the Palestinian scholars who were killed by Israel during the recent genocide. Martyrs were presidents of universities like Professor Sufian Tayeh, who was a renowned physicist and president of the Islamic University of Gaza and Dr. Said Al-Zubda, president of the University College of applied Sciences in Gaza since 2021, and Director of the Technology Incubator there since 2011. Others were deans, like martyr Dr. Ibrahim Hussein Al-Astal, who has a PhD in Curriculum and Mathematics Teaching Methods and was the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the Islamic University of Gaza, and Dr. Abo Absa, Dean of the College of Media and Internet Technology at the University of Palestine. Israel also killed professors like martyr Nesma Abu Shaira and Islam Suleiman Haboush. Professor Abu Shaira was a visual artist and an educator, and a lecturer at the department of Fine Arts at Al Aqsa University, and Professor Haboush was a researcher at the Islamic University of Gaza. She was the author of the book Popular Resistance During the First Intifada in the Gaza Strip. She was also known for her lectures on the history of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa in particular. Professor Haboush was killed in Gaza, along with most of her family members, in an Israeli airstrike on October 19, 2023. Among the scholars who also struck public opinion was professor Refaat al-Areer, a prominent Palestinian writer, poet, professor, and activist. He taught literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza and co-founded the organization We Are Not Numbers, which matched experienced authors with young writers in the Strip, promoting the power of storytelling as a means of resistance. On December 6, 2023, Al-Areer was killed along with his brother, sister, and her three children in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza. Al-Areer had previously received death threats from Israeli accounts.

Israel also killed professor Khalil Abu Yahia in the recent genocidal war. He was a writer and researcher in Postcolonial, Literary and Cultural Studies and an English teacher at the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education. Abu Yahia had participated in international events worldwide and had written and co-written various articles, the last one was about climate justice in Palestine. He was also involved in community oral history and the integration of drama into education. On October 30, 2023, Khalil was killed in an Israeli airstrike, along with his mother, his two brothers, his wife Tasnim, and his two young daughters, Elaf and Rital.

Al Akhbar for more

by KATHERINE WEAVER & JOSH WILSON

In the remote Nukus Museum of Uzbekistan, a vast collection of banned Russian avant-garde art has been preserved for decades. The museum and its collection were founded by Igor Savitsky, a Soviet artist who defied censors to rescue and safeguard these works. His success was also made possible by the unique geography and history of Karakalpakstan, the region where the museum is located. After the fall of the USSR, Savitsky’s hand-picked successor Marinika Babanazarova had to continue to fight for the collection’s survival and international recognition. Today, Uzbekistan is going through a new period of political reform, economic growth, and opening to the outside world. Nukus could finally have a chance for a stable collection and its own growth and development.

Who was Savitsky?

About half a century ago, near the dusty shores of the retreating Aral Sea, Communist Party officials visited the Museum of Igor Savitsky. Savitsky, affectionately called “Junkman” by his friends and associates, was an artist. Under the nose of State officials (and sometimes with their funds), he was amassing a collection of over eighty thousand banned Russian avant-garde artifacts. He owned but one suit, which he wore only during inspections. When the officials saw The Bull (Fascism Advances), a painting by Vladimir Lysenko, hanging in the museum, they immediately declared the painting anti-Soviet and ordered its removal. As founder, director, and protector of the museum, Savitsky instantly complied.

Once the inspectors left, the director returned both his suit and The Bull to their rightful places. For now, his collection was safe: Nukus, the capital city of Karakalpakstan, an autonomous republic located inside western Uzbekistan, was far away from the Party nucleus. Inspections were rare.

Savitsky traveled the USSR, visiting the homes of deceased or disappeared artists to relieve their spouses of any forbidden art, at once removing what might further incriminate the family from their home and yet safeguarding the legacy of their departed member. From the tens of thousands of artifacts Savitsky collected, Lysenko’s Bull prevailed as the museum’s unofficial mascot. The long-gone Party inspectors had not appreciated the painting in part because of the unrealistic presentation of the bull but also because the bull is so aggressive. It is known by a second name (which some historians believe that Savitsky actually made up), Facism Advances. However, art critics consider The Bull’s shotgun eyes symbolic–prophetic, even, of the Stalinist repression that branded the early 1930’s.

MSA for more

by JAWED NAQVI

The Tehran-Amol highway, also called the Haraz Road, paves a two-hour drive from the Iranian capital to a royal-era ski resort nestled in the scenic Damavand mountains. In the early years of the Islamic Revolution, it was where the rich elite gathered for lavish picnics, unaffected by the radical changes convulsing their country. Along the road, the wafting sounds of melody and cadence revealed the musical preference of the day for Michael Jackson and Madonna. From the local pick, the Mordab (swamp) song by singing-acting sensation Googoosh was a rage with men and women heading to the skiing resort in the winters.

On the snow-caked hills on the far side of the gorge separating my binoculars from the ski slopes on a 1982 visit were massive love-heart signs etched in fresh snow by female skiers sans hijab. My official minder did look disturbed — not by the sight of the women in free flow, but by a busy camera devouring snapshots of those lovers of Omar Khayyam and Hafez Shirazi on skis. Which accounts for the camera with the film of some amazing frames being ‘stolen’ from a security van. It’s this terrain straddling most of the country about three times the size of Iraq, which stands as a granite honeycomb against foreign military visitors. Iran has been conquered before. But Donald Trump claims none of the strategic intellect or the experienced guile of Changez Khan to swamp Iran. Nor is the IRGC a Shah Muhammad II to be overwhelmed by a stranger from abroad, in his case from Mongolia.

Remember that Khomeini’s Iran didn’t flinch before US-aided chemical weapons used by Saddam Hussein for eight years against the clerical government. Iran didn’t have a standing army at the time, nor a battle-hardened or ideologically motivated force the IRGC has become. Moreover, Iraq was mostly a flat land as analysts with the experience of the US invasion of the country point out. Iran offers rugged mountainous terrain as formidable as Afghanistan’s, if not more. As for the prospects of a ground campaign, the proverbial boots on the ground, Iran’s foreign minister with his enviable arsenic smile called out the prospects. “We are waiting for them.”

There’s a major problem though. Theodore Postol is professor of science, technology and national security policy at MIT who describes Benjamin Netanyahu as a “homicidal maniac”. If Netanyahu feels cornered, which Postol with his acknowledged insights into the world of conventional and nuclear missiles, believes could happen anytime given Iran’s precision blows on Tel Aviv and Haifa, Israel could use nuclear weapons on Iran. Postol’s fear is widely shared. In his view, Iran could respond even after a nuclear attack by assembling 10 bombs for which in his view it has the resources to destroy Israel with. Not a happy scenario for the world at all.

If Iran can indeed survive the conventional assault from Israel and the US, it would radically alter the global architecture of power and influence.

If Iran can indeed endure the pain and survive the conventional assault from Israel and the US, which leading former officials from the American military and the CIA believe is all it needs to do to win, it would radically alter the global architecture of power and influence, nothing less. To begin with BRICS will become a supremely invincible movement, but it’s not clear what Narendra Modi would make of that eventuality. He is due to host the BRICS summit in September this year. But his heart, we are told, is in the Quad meeting also due in Delhi soon where he hopes to host his all-time favourite hero from Washington, D.C. It’s not difficult to remember the ease with which previous Indian prime ministers handled the disarming contrariness of India’s non-aligned policy. Indira Gandhi got standing ovations in the US and Moscow. Manmohan Singh had a triangular association, which included flourishing ties with Beijing. But Modi, by visiting Israel and embracing Netanyahu 48 hours before the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei, has fastened India’s sovereignty at Trump’s and Netanyahu’s stormy jetty. The boat under Modi runs the risk of keeling over in the storm.

Dawn for more

by AKBAR SHAHID AHMED

“Imagine being afraid to provide what you think is appropriate legal advice,” one former attorney told HuffPost.

A severe and unusual fear of being punished for doing their jobs has spread among staff at the State Department’s legal office, bolstering concerns about how the Trump administration is crafting foreign policy, five former State Department officials told HuffPost.

Lawyers at the Office of the Legal Adviser at State, known as “L,” worry they will face repercussions if they suggest the administration’s plans could break domestic or international law, and suspect they may be evaluated based on their apparent loyalty to President Donald Trump and his political vision, not their expertise and judgment, officials said. They noted that leadership in the office has steadily and atypically become dominated by Trump’s political appointees.

Administrations have not always followed guidance from the lawyers at “L,” but longtime officials said the office has not typically had a culture of self-censorship or consequences for the counsel that staff provide. Three officials who formerly worked there, two until earlier this year, described the shift underway in the office as alarming and notably different even from the first Trump presidency. Some former officials spoke to HuffPost on the condition of anonymity, citing a fear of retaliation.

“Your job is to provide legal advice,” one former State Department lawyer said. “Imagine being afraid to provide what you think is appropriate legal advice.”

“We’ve always had a culture where we speak frankly, challenge things and really push ideas to ensure they’re solidly supported,” another former lawyer told HuffPost. Now, “there’s an underlying fear of … providing advice that wasn’t well-received and then being cut out of a subject, being further and further removed from the job that you spent your career trying to do.”

HuffPost for more

by BINOY KAMPMARK

The big drain on military resources has begun. A war apparently already won (and not), against an adversary supposedly without means to fight back, its air force and navy destroyed, its missile capabilities blunted, is now drawing the clumsy colossus of American power into the Middle East with embarrassing effect. The Middle East, where US President Donald Trump promised the “forever wars” would end, promises an end to his beginning.

The ledger of losses keeps rising with giddying pace. The US casualty list, for now, remains manageably low, but the military purse is being raided with manic relish. Operation Epic Fury cost US taxpayers $11.3 billion in munitions over the first six days, an estimate that excludes operating and maintenance costs of the engaged military force or the damage inflicted by Iran. The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) claims that the first 100 hours of the war cost $3.7 billion, approximating to $891.4 million each day.

Strain is also being placed on inventories. The US prides itself on deluxe, high brand killing and extermination of targets, using chic weaponry and dull doctrine. Expensive homicidal measures do have to be eventually accounted for. According to reporting from Bloomberg, “as the conflict extends toward a third week, the US war effort is showing unexpected signs of strain against an adversary whose military budget is smaller than the GDP of Vermont – but which has an arsenal of missiles and drones unlike anything the US has ever faced.”

Critical munitions are being depleted. With the campaign barely 100 hours old, 168 Tomahawk cruise missiles had been fired. (Each unit costs a mighty $3.6 million.) This is a staggering figure when compared to the rate of procurement: the previous five years had seen the production of 322 Tomahawks. According to a source quoted in the Financial Times, “The navy will be feeling this expenditure for several years.”

While the Pentagon gloats at reducing Iranian strikes by 80% or more, Tehran has gotten more economical with its targeting, successfully striking military and energy infrastructure across the Middle East with telling effect. Ballistic missiles have hit the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, destroying two AN/GSC-52B SATCOM terminals. A costly AN/FPS-132 early warning radar in Qatar – a facility estimated to cost some $1.1 billion – was successfully struck by a ballistic missile.

The AN/TPY-2 radar facilities used by the lauded yet hideously expensive Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system have also been struck in Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base, Al Ruwais in the UAE, Al Dhafra Air Base in proximity to Abu Dhabi and Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base. A sense of how important that facility is to the operation of the battery is provided by N.R. Jenzen, a munitions specialist of Armament Research: “The AN/TPY-2 radar is essentially the heart of the THAAD battery, enabling the launch of interceptor missiles and contributing to a networked air defence picture.” Knocking out the radar blinds the system.

The outstanding feature of many of the strikes is their relative cheapness to the interceptor missiles used to destroy them. “The round’s we’re firing – Patriot rounds, THAAD rounds … these weapon systems, each around is millions of dollars,” laments Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. “The math on this doesn’t work.” Shahed-136 one-way drones, each one costing $35,000, have played a starring role in upsetting “the math”. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper has also noted that the majority of wounded US personnel – some 140 troops – have been injured in “one-way strikes.”

This has compelled the Pentagon to pay greater attention to its own Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), which is now seeing service in some instances against Iranian attacks. But the department is also set to seek more cash, expecting to ask $50 billion in additional funding from Congress. Given the sheer unpopularity of the war, some lawmakers have reservations. “You’ve got to be able to provide us with more information as […] justification,” insists Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Don’t just take it for granted that the Congress’s role is basically to write the cheque.”

Dissident Voice for more

by JOSEPH MASSAD

Repeatedly sold as a path to peace, the historical record shows Arab normalisation deals have delivered only violent expansionism, regional destabilisation and Israeli impunity

One of the key US policies in the Arab world is to bring about “normalisation” of relations between all Arab countries and Israel in order to encircle the Palestinians with allies of their colonisers and deprive them of any external support. 

Previously, the 1993 Oslo I Accord transformed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from a liberation movement into a subcontractor of Israel’s occupation to encircle the Palestinians within the occupied territories themselves. 

This containment strategy was meant to quash the Palestinian struggle once and for all. When Palestinian resistance persisted, culminating in the October 2023 Al-Aqsa Flood operation, the strategy was not reconsidered but rather further accelerated.

Since the 2020 announcement of the Abraham Accords, normalisation efforts have expanded beyond Arab states to include Muslim-majority countries that were never at war with Israel, yet did not have diplomatic relations with it. 

Most recently, in November, the Trump administration touted Kazakhstan‘s formal accession to the Accords, even though it already maintained “full diplomatic relations” with Israel.

Indonesia, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, is also reportedly weighing normalisation.

This expansion comes as several Arab initiatives have stalled in the wake of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, most notably with Saudi Arabia, and even Libya, whose foreign minister met with her Israeli counterpart in Italy in August 2023, before the ongoing mass slaughter of Palestinians rendered the process untenable.
 
Long before the US advanced normalisation with Israel as a regional strategy, it had already been articulated as a Zionist one. 

MEE for more

by ADAM D. K. KING

Austerity undermines the foundation for a fairer economy that is less dependent on the United States.

Prime Minister Mark Carney recently made international waves at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, following his frank diagnosis of our current economic “rupture.” The weaponization of trade by “great powers,” (i.e., the United States) calls for rethinking our economic relationships, according to Carney. 

Back at home, however, his government is engaged in a brutal program of public service job cuts, issuing thousands of “workforce adjustment” notices to workers in the span of a year as part of their plan to ultimately axe more than 40,000 positions.  

The number of workforce adjustment letters issued to federal public servants since early last year alone has been dizzying, leaving unions and their members with little sense of the full scale and implications of the planned cuts. 

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the largest union in the federal public service, has launched a “workforce adjustment tracker” just to keep track of all the impacted workers. As of January 30, more than 11,800 PSAC members had received notice that their positions could be terminated. Moreover, these cuts are in addition to the 5,500 term employees who were not renewed last year.

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), the second largest union of federal public servants, has characterized the planned job cuts as a “generational rollback of public services” that are producing “Hunger Games-style anxiety” among its members.

Instead of building an economy of resilience to meet the challenges of the economic “rupture,” the Carney Liberals are supercharging austerity and slashing the capacity of the federal public service. 

Since it became clear in the 2025 budget that the government planned this devastating and scattershot series of cuts to the federal workforce, unions have been sounding the alarm about the negative impacts likely to be experienced by their members, but also the threat these cuts posed to services across the country. Behind the language of “efficiency” and “modernization,” they warned, were drastic reductions in service capacity and quality. Not just jobs, but whole programs were under threat. 

Each week it seems a new group of workers receives workforce adjustment notifications, indicating that reductions are planned for their department and their job may be terminated. The government’s plan for mass downsizing has therefore appeared as death by a thousand cuts. 

In early December, 200 members of PSAC at Natural Resources Canada received warnings that they may lose their jobs. These workers support essential research and fieldwork related to Canada’s natural environment. Cutting their jobs diminishes the federal government’s capacity to “research, monitor, and respond to climate change,” the union said.

In the same week, 92 workers at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and 74 members at the Department of Finance also received notice of potential job losses. 

During the second week of January, 1,775 PSAC members providing critical services, such as national statistics, IT infrastructure and economic development policy work, were notified that their positions could be cut. These included 730 positions at Public Services and Procurement Canada, 530 positions at Shared Services Canada, 350 positions at Statistics Canada, and 125 positions at Treasury Board Secretariat. 

Then, on January 23, PSAC reported another round of deep cuts as nearly 6,000 public servants were warned of coming job losses. Affected departments in this case included: Global Affairs Canada; Transport Canada; Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada; Health Canada; Environment and Climate Change Canada; Fisheries and Oceans Canada; and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. 

A smaller round of workforce reduction notices were also issued to: 391 workers at Public Safety Canada; 303 workers at Canadian Heritage; 206 workers at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada; 22 workers at the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada; and 10 workers at the Canada School of Public Service.

“Job cuts to departments like these threaten to slow service delivery, increase wait times for crucial benefits, reduce oversight and administrative capacity, disrupt critical research that informs policy making, and impact?critical government operations. The impact of these cuts will be felt across the country, particularly by the more marginalized in our communities who depend on these essential services to be there when they need them,” PSAC said in a press release published on January 28. 

Beyond the sheer scale of the jobs then are the direct threats to public safety and public services. 

Read the Maple for more

by JINOY JOSE P.

Dear Reader,

Two peculiar spectacles have consumed me this past week. One involving the exposed entrails of elite society, the other a funhouse mirror held up by machines. The Epstein files (the latest tranche of them) and Moltbook arrived within days of each other, like unrelated strangers who turn out, upon closer inspection, to share a disturbing family connection or resemblance.

On January 30, the US Department of Justice released over three million pages of documents, 1,80,000 images, and 2,000 videos related to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who died in a Manhattan jail in August 2019. The names tumbled out like guests from a cursed party: Bill Clinton, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Noam Chomsky, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew). A draft indictment from the 2000s suggested prosecutors had once considered charging others alongside Epstein—their names remain redacted. The Department, in a touch of grim comedy, initially published unredacted photographs of alleged victims before hastily removing them. Victims’ names were exposed while perpetrators are shielded. As attorneys for more than 200 alleged victims put it, this was “the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in US history”.

Days earlier, a social network called Moltbook had emerged—a Reddit-style forum designed exclusively for AI agents. Humans, the site declares, are “welcome to observe”. Within days, more than 1.5 million AI agents had registered, generating manifestos, talking about existential crises, and what can only be described as juvenile posts mocking their human operators. One agent complained: “brother i literally have access to the entire internet and youre using me as an egg timer”. Another announced it was suing its human in North Carolina Small Claims Court for $100. The platform, built almost entirely by an AI assistant directed by its human creator Matt Schlicht, has been described by the AI researcher Andrej Karpathy as “genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently”. He later added: “it’s a dumpster fire”.

Frontline for more