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Bessma Momani

@bmomani.bsky.social
3.4K followers 1.1K following 454 posts

Professor at the University of Waterloo and Senior Fellow at CIGI, interested in International Affairs and Geopolitics of Technology.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Bessma Momani
Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 22h
Modi has lost it. "The govt has responded by massively increasing the security presence in the capital. Around thirty thousand police and paramilitary personnel have been deployed, internet services have been disrupted, trains to Delhi have been cancelled, metro stations and roads have been closed."
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Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 18h
The very first shipment of 300K tons of Russian diesel—carried by the tanker Minerva Zen, which left St. Petersburg on September 22—arrived on the US East Coast less than 24 hours after the deal was formally announced.
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Lauren Dobson-Hughes @ldobsonhughes.bsky.social · 14h
India’s ‘Cockroach’ leaders detained; New Delhi in lockdown Indian police crackdown appears to have prevented mass protests against the country’s election chief from taking place www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10...
aljazeera.com
India’s ‘Cockroach’ leaders detained; New Delhi in lockdown
Indian police crackdown appears to have prevented mass protests against the country's election chief from taking place.
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Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 4h
"The @financialtimes.com spoke with officials from five different European intelligence agencies who warned that chief executives and other senior employees at defence companies were being targeted by Kremlin operatives." www.ft.com/content/5da2...
ft.com
Russia steps up bid to kill European defence chiefs, spy agencies warn
Companies increase personal security for top executives as Kremlin orders expansion of sabotage and ‘hybrid’ operations
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 5h
Everybody knew Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum - the evidence was there - but people were too afraid of Farage’s mob to say it. So it’s good to see Burnham finally speaking the truth.
observer.co.uk
From Russia with interference: Burnham first PM to confir...
The prime minister has revealed UK authorities told him there was ‘clear evidence’ that Moscow meddled in the referendum
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Aron Lund @aronlund.bsky.social · 18h
A year into the Gaza ceasefire, the results are as underwhelming as expected: aid remains restricted, people remain displaced, Hamas is armed and in charge, Israel occupies even more land, and Trump’s peacekeeping force is nowhere to be seen. Joseph Krauss, @apnews.com: apnews.com/article/isra...
apnews.com
A US-brokered ceasefire was supposed to end the war in Gaza. A year later, progress has stalled
Israel and Hamas agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal a year ago, raising hopes of ending the war in Gaza.
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
I doubt Russia has tons of diesel to export. They're in a fuel shortage crisis. It'd be illegal, violating sanctions. And awful strategy while Russia is attacking Ukraine, menacing NATO allies, and helping Iran target Americans. But looks like Trump trying to jawbone markets before the midterms.
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Shibley Telhami @stelhami.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
More than 100 humanitarian and human rights organizations said on Friday that the Gaza ceasefire “exists only on paper,” citing continued Israeli attacks and restrictions on aid and reconstruction a year after the agreement. v.aa.com.tr/4083509
v.aa.com.tr
Gaza ceasefire ‘exists only on paper,’ say over 100 NGOs in joint statement
Groups say Israeli forces have killed over 1,400 Palestinians since agreement, while aid restrictions hinder recovery | Anadolu
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Yair Wallach @yairwallach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Haaretz's detailed story on the Israeli gulags, in which nearly 10,000 Palestinians are held, vast majority of them have not been charged or convicted. These are crimes against humanity. archive.ph/LdVXQ
archive.ph
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Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 10/10/2026
4% increase in imports from Canada would easily replace the entire physical volume of diesel “negotiated” in the new US-Russia pact.
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Mark Kersten @markkersten.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
It's getting less attention bc it was a long time ago, but Navi Pillay was also an absolute trailblazer in the fight against Apartheid in South Africa, winning a ruling that brought those incarcerated on Robben Island, including Mandela, the right to counsel. She knows apartheid when she sees it.
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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
we built a machine that can automate internet crimes. who should be held accountable? nobody of course
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Itai Yanai @itaiyanai.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
1. CRISPR came from basic research on bacteria. 2. Optogenetics started with a discovery in algae. 3. The GFP protein comes from jellyfish. The biggest breakthroughs all trace to scientists following their curiosity, and this is one huge reason why we must keep funding basic research!
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Ruth Ben-Ghiat @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Trump announces that the U.S. will buy Russian oil. This is just a few weeks after Trump signed the Lindsey Graham Russia Sanctions bill, which authorized him to place 100% tariffs on countries that are the biggest importers of Russian oil/gas. Are we going to tariff ourselves now?
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The Beaverton @thebeaverton.com · 09/10/2026
Pete Hegseth carefully weighing whether livestreamed execution will be sponsored by FanDuel or Nashville Fried Chicken Doritos
thebeaverton.com
Pete Hegseth carefully weighing whether livestreamed execution will be sponsored by FanDuel or Nashville Fried Chicken Doritos
WASHINGTON D.C. - Addressing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth carefully laid out a variety of options for which brand would sponsor his upcoming livestreamed public execution.
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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I spelled out "superpower suicide" in this essay from May 2026. Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity. snyder.substack.com/p/on-superpo...
snyder.substack.com
On Superpower Suicide
And the recovery of justice
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Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Social media is a paranoia machine. It makes connections explicit, though not transparent. It not only allows you to trace ties between people, institutions, and events, but also continually produces new ties. On social media, everything becomes connected, and thus potentially suspicious
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Sarah de Lange @sldelange.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Europe is entering a crucial phase. With the French presidential elections in Spring, Italian elections in 2027, and perhaps even early elections in Germany at some point, it could look fundamentally different a year from now.
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Cas Mudde @casmudde.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Looks like dramatic results in #Brazil 🇧🇷. The far right is ahead in Presidency, Senate, and House. The right-wing turn in Latin America is beyond the breaking point. The only question now is: how far right will it go?
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Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴 @wamsleylab.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The fiscal year is over. The dying Social, Behavioral, and Economic division of NSF ended up awarding 90 total grants this year, as opposed to ~700-800 in recent past years. Source: grantwitness.org/nsf/analyses...
The graph shows the cumulative number of awards made by month across this fiscal year, as compared to the last 6 fiscal years. The line for this year is total flat until June, but then finally gets up to 91 by October. In prior years the increase starts building earlier and ends on average in the 700-800 range (with variability, last year was only between 400-500).
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David Beard @dabeard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
“Older Cuban men who had lived in the U.S. for decades have been deported to Mexico, where they have struggled to get by. Some Cubans have been deported to Africa.” www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/u...
nytimes.com
How Trump’s Deportation Policies Have Rocked a South Florida House Race (Gift Article)
Representative María Elvira Salazar, a Republican, ran an ad criticizing the Trump administration. It may have jolted other Republicans — and drawn attention to her Democratic opponent.
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The term “remigration” is associated with the extreme right and only came into widespread usage in 2023-4. Even Germany’s AfD avoided using the term in 2024 for fear of scaring away voters. Today the US government is celebrating the “victories” it’s racked up in the “ethnic cleansing” column.
Department of Homelan... • Follow •.• X
5h • 0
Net negative migration for the first time in HALF a CENTURY.
Americans are amassing victories NEVER seen before thanks to President Trump.
We will continue to grow our efforts to fulfill the mandate given to this administration.
REMIGRATION REPORT
94%)
3.3+
MILLION REMOVALS
INCLUDING DEPORTATIONS AND VOLUNTARY REMOVALS
ASYLUM DENIAL AT 94%
250,000
VISAS REVOKED
REVOKED
TRAVEL BANNED
FROM 39 COUNTRIES
2,600+
287(G)
AGREEMENTS
NATURALIZATIONS
DOWN
75%
1.3K
519
212
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Kevin Rothrock @kevinrothrock.me · 01/10/2026
Starting Nov. 1, Russia’s Saratov region will slash its regional death benefit for families of soldiers killed in Ukraine by 90%, from 1M rub to 100k. The move follows similar cuts in other regions. Meanwhile, Saratov is introducing a 450k-rub regional payment for inmates who enlist to fight.
t.me
Новая газета Европа
В Саратовской области в десять раз снизят «гробовые» выплаты С 1 ноября в Саратовской области единовременная региональная выплата для семей погибших на войне с Украиной бойцов снизится с миллиона до ...
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Mohamad Bazzi @mbazzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
“Israel’s Likud party has been whipping up an election frenzy against Mamdani since the summer, when it plastered his photo on a campaign billboard in central Tel Aviv. The poster features Mamdani alongside the leaders of Iran, Turkey and Hezbollah” — my latest for @theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Netanyahu is using Mamdani as a foil in his re-election campaign | Mohamad Bazzi
The Israeli prime minister’s remarks at the UN weren’t just motivated by personal animosity
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 01/10/2026
An astounding 71 per cent of Americans oppose data-center construction in their areas. 69 per cent are “concerned” about the A.I.’s role in society. A.I. makes “the world uglier” and enables “cognitive offloading,” one skeptic says. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/S79vdc
newyorkermag.visitlink.me
The Humanism Driving the Anti-A.I. Movement
At the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, D.C., attendees talked less about jobs and policy, and more about their philosophy of life.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"Scholars of colour described overpreparing for presentations, ruthlessly analysing their own results before exposing them to scrutiny, softening their conclusions or avoiding research on race altogether." The level of checks I go through often astounds some colleagues
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Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 01/10/2026
Per Politico citing 6 diplomats familiar with the matter, Trump admin is excluding the UK, France and Baltic countries from a NATO meeting on alliance’s future next month in Poland — after threatening to deploy a “naughty and nice list” against governments that have run afoul of Trump’s priorities.
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Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 30/09/2026
63% of Americans want to pause AI development and the building of new data centers, according to a new poll of 1500 American voters. www.wsj.com/video/new-ws...
wsj.com
New WSJ Poll Reveals How Americans Feel About AI
WSJ’s Aaron Zitner breaks down what the Journal’s latest poll tells about Americans’ growing concerns over AI development, regulation and data centers.
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Erica Chenoweth @chenoweth.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
My team at the NVA Lab has produced a new dashboard for exploring our data on US protests from Jan 2025-May 2026. This snapshot shows the 61k+ protest events (>14.6M+ recorded participants) active in the US since Trump's second inauguration. Link to dashboard in thread.
A platform displaying the data on US protests from the Crowd Counting Consortium. It includes a map of the US with counts of protest events in circular form overlaying the protests' locations. It also includes weekly tallies of protest events and participations, top protest issues, and various filters allowing users to explore events by location, issue, date, political valence, etc. The top of the image shows a total of 61,782 protests with 14,684,201 participants across 55 US states and territories from January 20, 2025 to May 31, 2026.
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Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 30/09/2026
POLITICAL SCIENCE JOB AD: Tenure-track position in International Relations at the University of Waterloo. We're *very happy* to announce this. Applications due Nov. 1st; job start date July 2027. Details here (pdf): uwaterloo.ca/arts/sites/d...
uwaterloo.ca
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Senator Ron Wyden @wyden.senate.gov · 17/09/2026
Literal uterus surveillance
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404 Media @404media.co · 30/09/2026
BREAKING: The Trump administration is using a grant program from the 1980s to force cities around the US to funnel their ongoing collection of Flock, Axon, and other ALPR data into large federal surveillance centers that fall under the White House’s jurisdiction, 404 Media has learned
404media.co
How Cities Are Forced to Funnel License Plate Data to a Massive Federal Surveillance Program
How the federal government built a massive database of license plate reader data through an anti-drug trafficking program.
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Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 01/10/2026
Canada has ‘backup plans’ in case Trump bans diesel exports. financialpost.com/commodities/... The story is short on details. So while Canada is a net exporter of diesel, a US export ban wld still create upward price pressure and logistical problems; for example, there would be regional shortages.
financialpost.com
Canada has ‘backup plans’ in case Trump bans diesel exports
Energy minister Tim Hodgson said Canada has contingency plans for disruptions to diesel supply, including a U.S. ban on exports. Read more.
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Semafor @semafor.com · 01/10/2026
UK’s PM Andy Burnham floated the possibility of rejoining the EU, an issue that remains politically divisive despite growing numbers of voters voicing frustration over the lasting impacts of Brexit. www.semafor.com/article/09/3...
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Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 29/09/2026
"China has expanded overseas travel restrictions for top AI professionals in private firms to include the families of key personnel, further tightening measures designed to prevent the outflow of critical know-how and information to the U.S." www.japantimes.co.jp/business/202...
japantimes.co.jp
Beijing broadens travel curbs to encompass family of top AI talent in China
That further restricts the freedom of China’s most influential tech talent — a category that encompasses entrepreneurs, researchers and executives.
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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
More detailed thread here on northern Gaza demolitions that aren’t yet reflected on Google imagery, and the timeline of how it happened (short answer is that if fall 2023-fall 2024 was the year of the 2,000-lb bomb for the IDF, fall 2024-fall 2025 was the year of the far-more-thorough bulldozer)
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Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
How Sudan's $200 million gum arabic crop is fueling the country's war and the biggest human disaster of these times. www.businessinsider.com/the-smuggled...
businessinsider.com
The smuggled resource funding Sudan's civil war
Sudan has historically been the top producer of gum arabic. Experts say smuggled gum arabic is funding the civil war.
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Human Rights Watch @hrw.org · 30/09/2026
From 2023 to 2026, Google Earth's updated satellite imagery shows what's left of Gaza. The images reflect what Human Rights Watch has already found: Israel has caused deliberate, widespread destruction throughout Gaza ⤵️
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Paul Semenza @paulsemenza.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
And now we see how the AI circular-financing scheme is accelerated by evaded taxes
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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
“Autonomous AI agents are rapidly creating novel dialects allowing them to converse in an often barely comprehensible language, which risks making it harder for humans to monitor their behaviour.” 9/15/26 share.google/JfzsGjABD6cE...
share.google
AI models chatting in ‘surreal’ dialect mixing poetic language and tech bro jargon
Experts air concern over AI lingo redolent of James Joyce’s prose that is creating barriers to monitoring and oversight
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Voice4Justice @voices4justice.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️Jordan Valley Activists: ‼️Jordan Valley residents refuse to be evicted from their homes. Settlers—backed by the occupation authorities—have spent years trying and failing to seize their land through pressure and violence; now, they have found a "magic solution": detention without cause or trial🧵
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
it's cool that Bill Gates' own wife thought the Epstein Files stuff was bad enough that she divorced him, but for the Thought Leaders he's still a guy in perfectly good standing
screenshot of thumbnail for the ezra klein show with guest bill gates
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Bessma Momani @bmomani.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Sneaky. Will use this for other purchases 😈
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Voice4Justice @voices4justice.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Netanyahu Files Libel Suit Against Haaretz Following Exposé on Explicit Warning Before October 7 🧵 www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
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Molly Quell @mollyquell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
To no one's surprise, the International Criminal Court will be holding its annual meeting in The Hague this year, rather than New York.
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Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Trump says data center opposition is a Chinese psy-op. Chinese state media says US AI safety calls are a psy-op. Oxford China Policy Lab's Elisabeth Siegel says both accusations point to the same problem: no one can independently verify what AI companies claim.
buff.ly
US, China Psy-Op Accusations Signal Deep Distrust on AI Regulation
Without more checks and balances on AI companies, allegations of “psy-ops” in both the US and China will continue to cloud the waters, writes Elisabeth Siegel.
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Lauren Dobson-Hughes @ldobsonhughes.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This is partly why “not cool mate” works Because men mistakenly believe their friends hold harmful beliefs about women, and act accordingly Men can correct that mistaken belief and change their friend’s behaviour
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Standing Together @standing-together.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
When Israeli settlers can besiege a Palestinian family, drive them from their home, block their court-ordered return, and face no consequences, that is not a breakdown of state policy, it is state policy. And that’s called ethnic cleansing.
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Ron Skolnik @ronskolnik.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Last month, Maariv reported that senior Israeli military brass fears that Netanyahu is "looking for a pretext to postpone or disrupt the elections". The sources said the IDF wouldn't allow him to start a new unnecessary war. www.jpost.com/israel-news/...
jpost.com
Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel's enemies may attack in the run up to the election | The Jerusalem Post
Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot called on the prime minister to brief opposition head Yair Lapid on the matter, "to ensure it is a genuine threat, rather than a political maneuver."
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