Bessma Momani

@bmomani.bsky.social

3.1K followers 960 following 310 posts

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

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Political science 34%

Economics 31%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Finbarr Bermingham @fbermingham.bsky.social · 10h

When listing the many problems facing Germany, it is difficult to know where to start. The industrial economy is haemorrhaging 10,000 jobs a month, Berlin says

For the first time since records began, manufacturing contributed under 20% to Germany’s economy last yr, per Eurostat

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Finbarr Bermingham @fbermingham.bsky.social · 10h

Germany’s coalition government is just six months old, but already some are wondering how long it can last. The economy is no larger now than it was five years ago and is being pummelled by a heady brew of structural problems and external threats.

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Rebecca Solnit, Will Jennings , and 22 more Shannon Vallor, Rebecca Solnit, Will Jennings, Brendan Nyhan, Thomas Backhaus, Christopher Wright, Robert W. Wallace, Alex Callinicos, Fabián Muniesa, Sanford F. Schram, Göran Bolin, Janet Murray, Alan Richardson, Aaron Sojourner, Margot C. Finn, Bessma Momani, Stephen Ryan, David Murakami Wood, Aleksandra Urman, Prokla Redaktion, Karen O’Leary, Césari Laurent, Tobias Singelnstein, Nathan P. Kalmoe, David Darmofal

Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 21h

A Palantir billionaire just called for public hangings.

“It's time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable,” writes Joe Lonsdale.

This is where Silicon Valley authoritarianism is heading:

www.thenerdreich.com/joe-lonsdale...

Joe Lonsdale Calls For Public Hangings

Silicon Valley radicalization escalates

www.thenerdreich.com

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 22h

Citing cybersecurity and fraud concerns, over the past week, India’s Department of Telecommunications issued confusing and troubling new directives that extend the government’s reach into citizens’ personal devices and private lives, writes Tech Policy Press fellow Prateek Waghre.

India Oversteps and (Partially) Backtracks on Plans to Intrude into Mobile Devices | TechPolicy.Press

In its bid to address fraud and cybercrime, India chose an approach that regards every person in the country as a potential offender, writes Prateek Waghre.

buff.ly

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt, Bessma Momani, Patrick Stokes

Culture Crave 🍿 @culturecrave.co · 22h

Mark Zuckerberg’s gamble on the ‘Metaverse’ has cost Meta more than $77B

The company now plans to cut spending on it and shift focus to AI wearables instead

(via WSJ)

Reposted by Bessma Momani, Nicolai von Ondarza

Mujtaba Rahman @mijrahman.bsky.social · 23h

Monday's meeting of Starmer, Macron and Merz could turn out to be even more important because of the US national security strategy. They need to decide whether to say in public what they are thinking in private: that the threat is no longer just Putin, it's also Trump

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 1d

All across Europe, as well as in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, US allies are reading Trump's national security strategy and realizing that it was authored by people who view them as enemies while idolizing Vladimir Putin and plagiarizing from his recent speeches.

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Scott L. Greer, Juan Cole , and 9 more Shannon Vallor, Scott L. Greer, Juan Cole, Alan Richardson, McKenzie Wark, Stephen D. Murphy, Margot C. Finn, Bessma Momani, Aurélien Mondon, Mark Rice, Aleksandra Urman, Kate Jackson

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 1d

“School officials have created a Microsoft Copilot prompt to review course descriptions with an eye toward avoiding ‘advocacy-oriented or prescriptive terms.’”

Terms: “dismantling, decolonizing, interrogating, challenging, centering, combating, liberation, resistance, activism, justice oriented”

To Root Out Wokeness in the Course Catalog, This Texas University Is Turning to AI

“The AI was upset with my use of the phrase ‘women's rights movement.’”

www.texasmonthly.com

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 1d

"AI chatbots can sway voters better than political advertisements
A conversation with a chatbot can shift people's political views—but the most persuasive models also spread the most misinformation." www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/04/1...

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Drop Site @dropsitenews.com · 1d

⭕️ Yale Lab Warned for 2½ Years About the Coming Massacre in El Fasher — & No One Acted

Nathaniel Raymond, head of Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab, explains that from the very first weeks of the war, his team was tracking a pattern the negotiators were missing: the RSF was conducting large-scale...

Nathaniel Raymond, head of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale, explains that from the very first weeks of the war, his team was tracking a pattern the negotiators were missing: the RSF was conducting large-scale, targeted killings across West Darfur while the world’s attention stayed fixed on Khartoum.

Raymond’s analysts became the first to confirm the public execution of West Darfur governor Khamis, which led to systematic house-to-house killings of Masalit families in El Geneina. Through unpublished ground photos and high-resolution satellite images, his team measured the bodies in mass piles — boys around 1.3m, men around 2.3m — and used those measurements to map the RSF’s killing routes from space.
“They were killing so many that the body piles became navigation points for us,” he said.

By mid-2023, the lab delivered a clear warning to the U.S. government and the UN Security Council: El Fasher would likely be attacked by late 2023 or early 2024, once the dry season allowed RSF movement. That warning came two and a half years before the October 26 massacre. Nothing changed.

Raymond then details what the world ignored: a siege lasting “three and a half times Stalingrad” and “three-quarters the siege of Leningrad.” 18 long months under siege that forced El Fasher into IPC-5 famine (the highest classification of starvation) for 15 whole months.

By late 2024, RSF bulldozers had constructed a nine-foot, 37-kilometer wall around the city, sealing the remaining Zaghawa and Fur communities into a kill box. When El Fasher fell, satellite images showed streets filling overnight with bodies collapsing in clear gunshot patterns.

The through-line of Raymond’s testimony is that the U.S., the UN, and major powers received years of precise warnings and satellite evidence — and did nothing.

His team’s final contact from inside the city came on the Monday after it fell: 1,200 dead in the morning, 10,000 by evening. No one answered the phone the next day.

@nattyray11 | @HRL_YaleSPH

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Drop Site @dropsitenews.com · 1d

⭕️ Dr. Yaser Elamin, president of the Sudanese American Physicians Association, described the Sudan conflict as the world’s largest humanitarian disaster, with 30 million people needing humanitarian aid. He warned of a dire future for Sudan’s children: “Every nine minutes a baby in Sudan dies...

Bessma Momani @bmomani.bsky.social · 1d

I’m honestly speechless…

Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 1d

"Soon, CNN will run live odds on world events where its viewers can gamble on them in real time on their smartphones."

CNN Partners With a Gambling App That Lets You Wager on Starvation in Gaza

The app company’s two biggest investors are also heavily invested in the Israeli military.

truthout.org

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Thomas Juneau @thomasjuneau.bsky.social · 1d

On Canada-Syria relations, see the great chapter by
@kshaheen.bsky.social in the U Ottawa CIPS collection edited by @bmomani.bsky.social and me in September:

www.cips-cepi.ca/cips-policy-...

Rethinking Canada’s Middle East Engagement in the Age of Trump’s Return – Centre for International Policy Studies

Canada's leading centre for analysis and debate of international affairs.

www.cips-cepi.ca

Reposted by Mark Petticrew, Alan Richardson, Bessma Momani , and 5 more Mark Petticrew, Alan Richardson, Bessma Momani, Els Torreele, David Murakami Wood, Iñaki Aldasoro, Aviel Roshwald, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 1d

"Soon, CNN will run live odds on world events where its viewers can gamble on them in real time on their smartphones."

CNN Partners With a Gambling App That Lets You Wager on Starvation in Gaza

The app company’s two biggest investors are also heavily invested in the Israeli military.

truthout.org

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Foreign Affairs @foreignaffairs.com · 1d

The United States should reset its relationship with Israel and start applying “U.S. and international laws, regulations, and standards to Israel in the same way it does to other countries,” argues Andrew Miller.

The End of the Israel Exception

A new paradigm for American policy.

fam.ag

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Paul McNamara @mpaulmcnamara.bsky.social · 2d

Sure I’d seen the FIFA Peace Prize before.

Bessma Momani @bmomani.bsky.social · 2d

Yes…. and with a sprinkle of Islamophobia…

Phillips OBrien @phillipspobrien.bsky.social · 2d

The Trump administration released its latest National Security Strategy--and one thing that can be said is that there is no more pretending. It’s a plan to weaken European unity, to make Europe MAGA, to force Europe to take economic dictation by the USA…. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

The New US National Security Strategy

Trump Says Openly That the US Wants to Dominate Europe and Make it MAGA

open.substack.com

Bessma Momani @bmomani.bsky.social · 2d

Will AI advancement hit a ceiling of available energy? Yes, yes, and yes! www.imf.org/en/publicati...

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Cas Mudde @casmudde.bsky.social · 2d

Later, Bannon and Breitbart pushed this in an even more explicitly far-right narrative with Muslim men overrunning an effeminate Europe, building more clearly on European far-right narratives — but, probably, also on “paleoconservative” narratives in the U.S. (eg Pat Buchanan).

Reposted by Kim L. Scheppele, Tim Bale, Tom Griffin , and 2 more Kim L. Scheppele, Tim Bale, Tom Griffin, Bessma Momani, Aleksandra Urman

Cas Mudde @casmudde.bsky.social · 2d

This seems incredible to read, as it could come straight out of an Orbán 2015-16 speech, but this has actually been a dominant position within the broader U.S. Right for decades. 🧵

Jana Puglierin @jpuglierin.bsky.social · 2d

Europeans are waking up this morning to find the new US National Security Strategy (quietly) released. And what it has to say on Europe could not be clearer. On the „stark prospect of civilizations erasure“ for example. 👇

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 2d

The Trump National Security Strategy is bonkers in many ways but this objective stood out:

"Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations"

Making their strategy of supporting radical right and extremist parties explicit.

Bessma Momani @bmomani.bsky.social · 2d

Awful encroachment on civil liberties

In August, ICE announced that Palantir would build a
$30 million surveillance
platform called
ImmigrationOS to aid the agency's mass deportation efforts, around the same

Reposted by Helene Rey, Bessma Momani

Phillips OBrien @phillipspobrien.bsky.social · 2d

The New US National Security Strategy

Trump Says Openly That the US Wants to Dominate Europe and Make it MAGA

open.substack.com

Bessma Momani @bmomani.bsky.social · 2d

AI bubble getting bigger and bigger…

Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 2d

Wall Street banks expect US stocks to post another year of double-digit gains in 2026, defying recent investor jitters over Big Tech companies’ huge spending plans and a potential bubble in the artificial intelligence sector on.ft.com/3MhLjcw

Bessma Momani @bmomani.bsky.social · 2d

There is so much food for thought in this article. From legit and real fears of AI in higher education to indeed some questionable moral panic. Must read to both ponder, consider and critique.

www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself

Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.

www.currentaffairs.org

Reposted by Tom Griffin, Will Lowe, Bessma Momani

Reposted by Bessma Momani

Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 2d

The US government plans to take more equity stakes in critical minerals companies, a White House official said Thursday, calling the once-rare move necessary to counter China’s dominance in the raw materials used in everything from semiconductors to MRI machines.

US Plans More Stakes in Minerals Companies, Trump Official Says

bloom.bg

Reposted by Frank Kühn, Tom Griffin, Bessma Momani

Lukas Mengelkamp @lukasmengelkamp.bsky.social · 2d

The new US National Security Strategy says explicitly, that the US should intervene in European domestic policy. It is difficult to interpret "Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations." otherwise in the context of everything else this government says and does.

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Bessma Momani

David Henig @davidheniguk.bsky.social · 2d

US diplomats are being asked to assist fascists in Europe as part of national security.

Reposted by Bessma Momani

AFP News Agency @en.afp.com · 2d

University in Hong Kong suspends student union after a message was posted on campus expressing condolences and urging justice for the victims of a major fire

u.afp.com/S7oZ

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