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Ukraine Solidarity Group ✊ A Digest of News from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 2-February-2026.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤ Bombing appeal to trade unions.
⬤ Peace talks farce.
⬤ Ukrainian PoWs tortured to death.
⬤ Further evidence of Russian torture and other crimes.
⬤ Ukrainian support for Palestine.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Rescuing the living, searching for the dead (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 8th)

Russia’s terror by family: father and son get huge sentences on fabricated ‘Ukrainian saboteur’ charges (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 6th)

“Programs about Christ followed by beatings half to death”: Kherson’s ex-mayor Volodymyr Mykolaienko on his years in Russian captivity (The Insider, February 6th)

Materials on Russian Crimes in Crimea Presented in Washington (Crimea Platform, February 6th)

The Face of Resistance: The Story of Serhii Ofitserov (Crimea Platform, February 6th)

‘Guilty of not betraying Ukraine’. Russia’s supreme court imposes 13-year sentence against Oksana Hladkykh (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 5th)

Russia ‘arrests’ Crimean mother of two 15 months after abducting and hiding her (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 4th)

Weekly update on the situation in occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, February 3rd)

Young Crimean deported from Kazakhstan to face huge sentence in Russia for donating money to Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 3rd)

Russia sentences son of prominent Zaporizhzhia farmer to 15 years, after abducting father & son (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 2nd)

Abducted, tortured and sentenced to 17 years for opposing Russia’s invasion and for his love of Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 2nd)

The Woman Who Didn’t Break. Part Four (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 1st)

News from Ukraine

Eternal memory to the miners murdered by Russia (Facebook, February 4th)

Bombed cities, freezing homes — a call to trade unions to stand with Ukraine (Youth Council of the Federation lf Trade Unions of Ukraine, February 2nd)

In war-torn Ukraine, showing sympathy for Palestine is no longer a taboo (Al Jazeera, February 2nd)

Apashe & Alina Pash – Kyiv (YouTube, January 20th)

War-related news from Russia

Ukrainian prisoners of war tortured to death in Russian captivity (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 8th)

In Search of Russia’s Lost Opposition (Jacobin, February 6th)

Rubber-stamping rejections. Germany turns away Russian army deserters (Mediazona, 5 February)

Russian plan to impose a single, state-backed digital messenger (Posle.Media, 4 February)

The surreal trial of Artemy Ostanin. Six years for a joke (Mediazona, 4 February)

The Antichrist Today: Russian Conservative and Techno-Enlightenment Versions (Ilya Budraitskis, Eflux, February 4th)

Russian Deserters and Kenyan Job Seekers (Russian Reader, February 3rd)

Military Ecology and Russia’s War Machine (Posle.Media, January 28th)

Analysis and comment

Farcical peace talks in Abu Dhabi resolve nothing as Ukraine shivers under Russia’s winter onslaught (The Conversation, February 5th)

End of Russian gas imports to the EU: closer than ever (OSW, January 16th)

International solidarity

Unison activists: we shared the reality of today’s Ukraine (Facebook, February 6th)

Solidarity motion with Ukraine by independent PCS left (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 4 February)

From 20 February to 6 March, we call on friends, comrades, and anti-authoritarian groups worldwide to take part in 2 weeks of Action (Solidarity Collectives, February 3rd)

Upcoming events

Saturday 21 February, 2.0pm, Piccadilly Circus, London. Demonstration: “Russian troops out. Stand with Ukraine!” on 4th anniversary of full-scale Russian invasion

Wednesday 4 March, 6–8pm, Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Public Meeting. Wilson Room, Portcullis House, Parliament, 1 Victoria Embankment, London SW1A 2JR. Chair: John McDonnell MP. Speakers include: Mick Antoniw MS / Yuliya Yurchenko, Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine / Yuliia Bond, Ukrainian Association of Wales / Tanya Vyhovsky, Vermont State Senator / Mariia Pastukh, Vsesvit – Ukraine Solidarity Collective / Johanna Baxter MP / Clive Lewis MP / Stephen Russell, TUC International / Mick Whelan, former ASLEF General Secretary

🔴This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at Ukraine Information Group.

We are also on twitter. Our aim is to circulate information in English that to the best of our knowledge is reliable. If you have something you think we should include, please send it to 2U022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.


We are now on Facebook and Substack! Please subscribe and tell friends. Better still, people can email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com, and we’ll send them the bulletin direct every Monday. The full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine is going into its third year: we’ll keep information and analysis coming, for as long as it takes.

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News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 182

Seamus Kearney 🎤 Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant taste death only once' - William Shakespeare @ Julius Caesar.


In the aftermath of the Loughgall ambush, code named ' Operation Judy', on 8th May 1987 in which 8 heavily armed IRA Volunteers were killed by a 24 strong squad from the SAS, an IRA enquiry was launched into the circumstances surrounding the operation.

Alongside the IRA 's Northern Command operations officer, the OC of the Internal Security Unit, Freddie Scappaticci, got to work on attempting to ascertain what exactly happened. Fundamentally, British Intelligence, through their agent Scappaticci, were made aware of every aspect of the IRA enquiry, including the names of IRA personnel who escaped the ambush, safe houses, billets on the night before the operation, where the weapons were stored, etc. As it turned out the enquiry was inconclusive and a shadow of doubt would continue to hang over the Loughgall ambush for years to come.

After moving a quantity of explosives from an IRA dump to a safe house in 1981, Joe Fenton was arrested and taken to Castlereagh Interrogation Centre. A Special Branch officer told him that they were aware of his work for the IRA and in particular the transporting of a quantity of explosives. With nowhere to turn Joe Fenton, through threats and blandishments, agreed to work for Special Branch and thus entered a world of espionage and the dark art of spying on the Provisional IRA.

His main handler, who controlled a total of 18 agents from the IRA, INLA and Loyalist paramilitaries, provided him with survival techniques in the field and protected him to the utmost.

In 1982, Special Branch provided Fenton with 15,000 pounds sterling to set up his own estate agency, Ideal Homes on the Falls Road, West Belfast. He also received supplementary payments of over 2,000 pounds sterling. As an estate agent he was able to offer the Provisional IRA empty houses, meeting houses and temporary arms dumps. After taking up the offer, Special Branch proceeded to bug the IRA houses and thereby penetrate the IRA's Belfast Brigade, virtually wiping out their weapons dumps and Active Service Units from 1982 onwards.

In 1985 Fenton panicked and told his handler that his nerve had gone and cited that the IRA were investigating a number of botched operations, which he felt could lead to him.

His handler passed his concerns up the chain of command to the TCG, which made a corporate decision to sacrifice two of their own agents in order to deflect from Fenton. Subsequently, the handler passed the two names over to Fenton, who in turn passed the names to his senior Belfast Brigade contact. Within days the Brigade had invited in the Internal Security Unit to investigate the pair and Freddie Scappaticci kept his handler informed from that point onwards.
 
As a result of the TCG's actions a husband and wife, Gerard and Catherine Mahon, were arrested and interrogated by Scappaticci and his British agents within the ISU, and subsequently executed on 9th September 1985. Catherine, after seeing her husband being shot in front of her, broke loose and attempted to run away but was shot in the back. Both died at the scene and Joe Fenton gained a new leash of life.

Two years later in 1987 Fenton was again under pressure after a series of seizures and compromised IRA operations left him vulnerable again. He complained to his handler that he needed the pressure off him and the handler sent his concerns up to the TCG. Within a short space of time another person's name was handed over to Fenton via his handler and on 12th April 1987 Charles Mcllmurray was abducted by Scappaticci and the ISU, interrogated and executed. His body was found in a van left at the rear of a service station at Killeen, on the border.

Despite his long service with the British, Joe Fenton's fortune was about to end with the release of his nemesis, Brendan Hughes (The Dark) in November 1986. When Brendan was offered one of Fenton's bugged houses in Rockville Street, Falls Road, he declined the offer and became suspicious of Fenton and his relationship with the Belfast Brigade IRA. When he voiced his concerns over Fenton he was ignored, but Fenton panicked when his Belfast Brigade contact told him that Brendan Hughes was suspicious of him.

After a mortar team was captured in the Andersonstown area during the Summer of 1988 the suspicion on Fenton grew, especially after a link between the British successes and properties provided by Ideal Homes was established.
 
Inevitably, the Belfast Brigade invited in Freddie Scappaticci to investigate Joe Fenton in August 1988, the meeting between Scappaticci and Fenton taking place in the Lower Falls area. The actual meeting was a mild affair, but Fenton left it dishevelled and disorientated, and informed his handler that his nerves were at breaking point. The fact that Brendan Hughes was gunning for him sent a shiver up his spine. In the latter half of 1988 his business, Ideal Homes, began to crumble and he lost interest in business as the IRA lost interest in him. He was no longer an asset to the British nor the IRA, and this had a detrimental impact on his overall health.

He went to England on the pretext of going to a boxing match and disappeared for around eleven days in February 1989. Brendan Hughes left instructions with Scappaticci and the ISU that Joe Fenton was to be lifted by them on his return and taken across the border to be interrogated by him personally.
Meanwhile, Fenton met his long term handler, the Special Branch officer who had controlled him from the start, at an address in England. He was in an extremely distressed and agitated state, babbling on about Brendan Hughes finally exposing him and expressing a determination not to return to Belfast.
Despite his best efforts to impress upon his superiors in the TCG that Fenton had lost his nerve and needed to be extracted forthwith, the handler failed and Fenton was told to return to Belfast.

The only way they could get Fenton to calm down and agree to return to his native city was by telling him that the 'cavalry' would come and rescue him if he was abducted by the IRA. Furthermore, it was stressed to him that the people who would interrogate him would be on the same team, a reference to Freddie Scappaticci and co. As a result Joe Fenton agreed to return to Belfast.

Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of  
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.

Stakeknife 🕵 The Rise And Fall 🕵 Act ⅤⅠⅠⅠ

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred

 

A Morning Thought @ 3076

Gary Robertson ⚽ Tuesday and what some refer to as the “New Firm” Derby. 

Dundee Utd at home to Aberdeen. A match that promised little delivered little and honestly the highlight of the match for Utd fans was a Camara volley, beautifully taken that crashed off the post and across the Aberdeen goal before being ushered away. In the second half the usually reliable Kevin Nesbit fluffed his lines big time by rolling the ball past an open goal. Final result 0-0. A point apiece that suited no one.
 
On a night for draws, in the championship games between Dunfermline v Partick and Queens Park v St Johnstone finished 2-2 and 1-1 respectively, and keeps the saints top of the league by three points. Partick squandered this opportunity to close the gap.
 
The first of the Challenge Cup semis was played with Scott Brown's championship side Ayr United facing high flying Inverness of League One. The final result being 2-1 to the visitors. With Ayr United in a playoff spot for the SPL whilst a trophy is nice the team from the town of “Honest men and Bonnie lassies” have their eyes, I suspect, focused on bigger prizes.
 
Wednesday saw championship sides Airdrie and Raith rovers battle out a 1-1 draw in the second semi final of the Challenge Cup, the home side eventually coming out the victors, winning 5-3 on penalties.
 
Thursday and Celtic travelled to Stuttgart more in hope than expectation of restoring at least a little pride after the bruising home defeat by the Germans. An early Luke McCowan goal settled nerves and for a while what seemed impossible hours before allowed us the hope of “what if?” 30 seconds in 1-0 to Celtic. However dreams rarely if ever come true and Stuttgart progressed to the next round but the Bhoys can come away from that with their heads held high as thoughts now turned to Sunday and the Glasgow Derby.
 
Goals galore on Saturday in the SPL, seventeen in fact with the highlight being Falkirk's 5-1 demolition of shellshocked Kilmarnock.
 
First up, Dens park where 6 goals were shared between Dundee and Hibernian. In the battle for European places this was a blow for Hibernian who looked set to collect 3 points before a 95th minute equaliser by the home side's Congreve sent the Edinburgh men back to Easter road licking their wounds. The pick of the goals being a superb shot by Hib's Suto. A cross field ball brilliantly controlled, and evading two Dundee defenders and keeper, bulleted home in the 84th minute to restore parity before McGrath once again gave the visitors the lead before the late equaliser. A thrilling match and a draw being perhaps the right result as neither deserved to lose this encounter. Throughly enjoyable to watch.
 
Less so perhaps Hearts who faced Aberdeen at Tynecastle with the prospect of extending their lead at the top of the table. A match won by a solitary goal by Braga and the home side went seven points clear. A game of very little quality and little to get excited about but enough to send the Jambo faithful home one step closer to a title party.
 
Performance of the day at the Falkirk Stadium where an own goal by Kilmarnock's Brown in the 11th minute opened the floodgates and a deflated Kilmarnock were steamrollered by a rampant Falkirk. Whilst the away team managed a goal on 40 mins by Kiltie the damage was already done. 3-1 at half time adding two further in the second half and a punishing performance by McGlynn's men. It’s been a difficult eight days for Neil McCann and Kilmarnock.
 
Motherwell did what Motherwell do and as the sun shone on Fir Park, a touch of spring in the air, the home side ran out 2-0 winners over Dundee Utd. A double by Maswanhise, the first from the penalty spot after 37 mins, and his brace completed on 46 mins, the Steelmen can quite rightly be proud of their recent form and could yet challenge for third place.
 
Doomed Livingston managed to scrap out a 1-1 draw with St Mirren to take them within 7 points of eleventh placed Kilmarnock and with time running out it would take a miracle of biblical proportions to save their season.
 
In the Championship St Johnstone restored their five point lead with an emphatic 3-1 victory over Ayr whilst their nearest challengers Partick played out a goalless draw with third placed Arbroath.
 
League One, and Inverness saw their lead cut to three points after a disappointing (and for me coupon busting) goalless draw with bottom of the table Kelty Hearts. Their nearest pursuers, Stenhousemuir, getting the job done by a solitary goal over Cove Rangers.
 
League Two - East Kilbride maintained their 5 point lead with a 3-1 victory over Clyde whilst second placed Spartans (still with two games in hand) crushed Annan 4-0.
 
So to Sunday …
 
Now anyone that reads my social media posts will know that before Thursday I was not looking forward to the trip to Ibrox. The home side looking like they have their act together under
Röhl. and Celtics MON having to patch together a team of half fit and disinterested players the signs we’re looking ominous. However Thursday gave Celtic fans at least a glimmer of hope. So as the teams took to the pitch, the Rangers to the strains of Tina Turner and “Simply the best” (in Govan perhaps but one title in 14 years does have fans of other teams sniggering at their delusion - even some home fans cringe at the playing of the track but I digress) and the sea of colour that one comes to expect at these “games” it all looked set for an exciting afternoon.
 
I remember once describing my first experience of what was then the Old Firm Derby as “frightening”, and mocked relentlessly for it, (I mean how dare a five year old from the countryside get overwhelmed on such a big occasion) and now as I’m older (much older) I still feel myself charged with an electricity, as I’m sure all fans of both clubs do, at kick off. It wasn’t to last though as right from the first whistle it was clear the better team were the men in red white and blue. Celtic's passing was sloppy, their marking way off, and were made to pay in the eighth minute when a spectacular overhead kick from Chermiti sent the majority of the 50,000 watching and millions around the world into raptures. In fairness, sat by the TV, even I applauded the goal. A piece of individual skill and brilliance from a player whom the Rangers will do well to hang on too as surely his numbers have not gone unnoticed from bigger teams and leagues. 

A comedy of errors continued for Celtic in the first half, and in the 26th min the big man from Santa Maria capitalised on an error by Celtic defender Dane Murray and stole the ball from Arajuo before firing home from close range to give the Gers a 2-0 lead. Jubilant Rangers fans and despairing Celtic fans at half time as three points looked certain to stay at Ibrox. 

At half time I phoned my son to talk about the game but found out he’d chosen to make a cheesecake instead as he was far from optimistic of a result. In fairness I couldn’t argue with him as right now the only thing Celtic were cooking up was a whole load of trouble and a league season ending humiliation. As the teams came out for the second half I feared more of the same and with a scuffed shot by Moore in the 47th minute landing comfortably in the arms of Sinisalo it all looked ominous for Celtic. The footballing Gods had other ideas though and Celtic pressure began to force the Rangers to defend and finally in the 56th minute a cross from Nygren was nodded into the net by Kieran Tierney. 

The clock in Ibrox showed 13-13 and the game swung Celtic's way. Relentless pressure from the Hoops but from some world class keeping from Butland the Celts could easily have had two or three more.
 
Then the controversy. The 88th minute a header from Maeda judged to have been handled by Rangers' Sterling and John Beaton was called to VAR to make a very big decision.
 
Penalty to Celtic!!
 
Up stepped Reo Hatate with the whole of Celtic's league season on his shoulders, the eyes of millions of fans on him. Prayers offered up to various deities for him to score or miss depending on your viewpoint.
 
The penalty taken and two magnificent saves by Butland kept the ball out before finally being bundled into the net by a much relieved Hatate.
 
The comeback complete and with stoppage time looming could a winner be found?
 
The final whistle and a 2-2 result that certainly suited the away fans more who with a game in hand now see second as a real possibility, some even still believe the league can be won.
 
The frustration boiled over after the final whistle. Clearly the most frustrated being Rangers who snatched a draw from the jaws of victory.
 
We go again next weekend but this time in the Scottish Cup.
 
And whilst I was happy with the point as the dust settled a message from a friend reminded me who the big winners were this weekend - Heart of Midlothian.
 
The title is theirs to lose now .. the run in will be interesting.
 
Celtic with a rearranged midweek match against Aberdeen can now regain second spot, however. But for me, now hanging onto second and perhaps a Scottish cup victory will be an achievement in itself.
 
Let me add purely from a footballing point of view the job Danny Röhl has done at Rangers this season is well worthy of praise and I’m sure success is just around the corner even if it is some time before they’re “simply the best” again.

Til next time ….

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Hearts ⚽ Big Weekend Winners

Organisation For Women’s Liberation-Iran 🏴Statement on 2-March-2026.

Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq, a member of the central committee of the Communist Alternative Organisation and a prominent feminist, was assassinated this morning in Baghdad.

Yanar Mohammed
We condemn this brutal crime and offer our sincere condolences to her family, comrades and friends for this great loss.
 
Thanks to the military aggression of the United States and the West, Iraq has become a hotbed of terrorism for three decades now. Chaos, riots and terror are a permanent part of the shattered Iraqi society. Every day, several lives are lost and hundreds of people face constant harassment and pressure from these thugs. 

Unfortunately, following the brutal attack by Israel and the United States on Iran, chaos and terrorist crimes will spread in the region.

Freedom-loving and justice-seeking humanity must rise up against the monsters that created and feed terrorism. By targeting the source we might be able to stop the killing, crime and destruction in the region. We must build a strong barrier against these terrorist organisations from all sides, Islamic and State (US/Israel and the West.)

Yanar Mohammed Assassinated

Dixie Elliot ✊I have noticed that the Far-Right here in Ireland are still spreading the black propaganda of the Epstein Axis of Evil, Trump and Netanyahu, that the Iranians admitted to accidently bombing the girls' primary school in Southern Iran.
 
The Iranians admitted nothing of the sort, and it has since been proven that the lie began when a fake post appeared on social media claiming that Iran had made the admission and was quickly spread by cretins who feed on racial hatred and gleefully support the genocide of innocents.
 
Yesterday, March 2nd, the United Nations Educational Agency, UNESCO, released a statement condemning the bombing of the Iranian girls school which killed around 150.
 
It said that 'the school was struck during US and Israel military attacks on Iran on Saturday.'

These screenshots should be used to counter the black lies of the Epstein Axis of Evil and the human maggots who spread them . . . 









Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Black Lies

Barry Gilheany ✍😔 Writing about the proliferation of far right loudmouths like the white US supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes and the UK anti-Islam, anti-immigration figure Tommy Robinson on social media who seem to outbid each other to say the most outrageous and offensive things, the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland writes that they are competing in an attention economy.[1] 

For the past few years, writers and reformers have issued siren warnings about how platforms like X/Twitter have become a toxic sludge of hate speech and disinformation giving a bully pulpit to extreme voices such Advance UK, a political party that now includes Tommy Robinson and that vows to ban indefinite leave to remain, ban the foreign -born from becoming British citizens and encourage all settled migrants to leave. That its candidate polled less than the Monster Raving Looney Party candidate in last week’s Gorton and Denton by-election and that it is competing with other micro outfits like Reclaim UK and Restore UK to leech support away from, in the words of Elon Musk, the “weak sauce” of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK does not detract from its contribution to the, as the late E.L. Doctorow put it, the steady “enshittification” of the internet. But it is the role of the attention economy in facilitating surveillance capitalism and its colonisation of humanity’s cognitive and deliberative capacities and one very real human casualty of it – the death by suicide of 14-year-old Molly Russell that is the overarching concern of this article.

In 1971, the economist Herbert Simon, when pondering the problem of information overload, opined that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”. Since his primary interest was in organisations, Simon saw this as a problem to be solved. In the 1990s, the moguls of Silicon Valley seized upon this opportunity. For if attention had become the scarce commodity in a newly networked economy, if it was possible to capture it, sell access to it to advertisers and monitor what it revealed, the world could be your oyster. It was the beginning of what the writer Michael Goldhaber called the “attention economy.” First out of the traps was Google with its user friendly, all things to all people search engine – the Universal Library of Things. It monitored what the users searched for and used the resulting data to improve the search engine. However this did not satisfy the company’s venture capital investors who demanded a business model. The Google bros then realised that they could use their monitoring data as raw material for a machine learning algorithm that provided outputted information about users whom advertisers might be interested in.[2]

Thus was born what the Harvard academic Shoshana Zuboff has labelled “surveillance capitalism.” In its Manifesto for Attention Liberation, The Friends of Attention describes how both surveillance capitalism and the attention economy have created a business model for us. Over the past three decades, the explosive growth of the internet and the global proliferation of data devices have meshed with a series of shortsighted political decisions: along the way, the entrepreneurial savviness of the Tech Bros has produced, in effect, an ostensibly “free” digital universe – whose hidden operating cost is the depletion and pollution of the minds and sense of its users.[3]

For attention activists, the business model of the “attention economy” is a globe-spanning industrial farm that extracts money from a billion vegetative humans suspended in an infinite web, eyes glazed. In this dystopia, humanity devotes almost the entirety of its waking hours in digital spaces substantially financed by extractive profit models that systematically tap human beings for the monetary value of our eyeballs. This twelve-trillion-dollar operation motors a global-scale, computationally intensive, and commercially lucrative system for the sourcing, aggregation, and nonstop auction-market of human attention. The fundamental immorality of analysing this business model in cost-benefit terms is that our dehumanisation cannot be quantified. In the words of Burnett et al, this is not a conversation about trade-offs. It is a conversation about coercion, theft, and the instrumentalization of human life.[4]

The global behemoth that is the attention economy is comprised of the world’s largest five companies who are all technology providers (Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet or Google, and Amazon) and who are each valued at more than two trillion.  Four of the five have billions of customers who use their products more or less continuously, and whose data-commodification constitutes a central business operation. The fifth makes the chips that power the processing and manipulation of that data by means of algorithmic AI. The Big Tech empire exploits the invisible iron cage ubiquity of its digital platforms to garner information about us – our clicks and keystrokes, our blinks and grimaces, our typos, and our personality types – and then input these data into giant predictive technologies. In turn our profiles, preferences, foibles, and projected future personalities are sold off to the highest bidder.[5]

The harms of this new economy are conceptualised by the Attention Liberation Movement as “human fracking.” For just as petroleum fracking is wreaking irreversible damage to our external environment (our woods and fields, our water and sky), while the human frackers are inflicting possibly permanent damage to our interior environment (our minds and hearts, our thinking and deliberative abilities, and our ability to be and to suit with ourselves and the people we love.[6]

The advent of the app ChatGPT in November 2022 which rapidly became the fastest-growing app in the world has raised for some commentators the prospect of the demise of the attention economy. For why not type that search which one would have automatically inputted into Google into ChatGPT instead. Surely the innovation of chatbots and LLMs (large language models) would sound the death knell of the attention economy. This conundrum is addressed by the Cambridge researchers, Yaqub Chaudhary and Jonnie Penn, in the Harvard Data Science Review where they develop their thesis on the “intention economy” a prospect which they view as a “lucrative yet troubling new marketplace for digital signals of intent,” from buying cinema tickets to voting for political candidates. This model is one of a marketplace for behavioural and psychological data that signals human intent and operates through natural language interfaces powered by LLMs. In the view of John Naughton, this differs from the attention economy in that it trades on users’ limited attention spans through advertising whereas the difference in the beast that is the intention economy trades on signals that predict, shape and game human intention before actions occur and so facilitates much deeper psychological manipulation through personalised AI interactions. This MO enables “conversation” with chatbots in free and unguarded ways heightening the risk of signposting to dangerous forums such as pro-anorexia and suicide websites. The plausibility and false authenticity is powered by the ability of LLMs to infer private attributes from conversations (while, incidentally, bypassing the cookie restrictions which so aggravate the advertisers and hucksters of the supposedly ancient attention economy).[7]

Regardless of any such academic or structural differentials within the new information economy, the human casualties of the aforementioned models and the deleterious effects on public life are stark. Be it the harvesting of the data of unsuspecting Facebook users by the rogue research company Cambridge Analytica in order to facilitate the victory of Leave in the 2016 EU Referendum in the UK; the flooding of the zone by shit (in Steve Bannon’s words) generated by the bot factories in St Petersburg to cause maximum disruption of US Presidential election and to bolster Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine and the coarsening of public discourse by the rage machine that is Twitter; social media networks appear to have lost their emancipatory lure and potential since the heady days of the Arab Spring. The foremost critic of the erosion of democracy is Shoshana Zuboff who in her 2019 seminal work The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power documents the conditions of online surveillance we all live under, the covert harvesting of private data that enables targeted advertising and allows for our emotional manipulation. This week will see on both cinematic and television screen the fruits of her collaboration with the British film maker film-maker Marc Silver the documentary Molly vs the Machines which was due to be shown at the Glasgow film festival on 1 March, having its simultaneous UK premiere, before being broadcast on Channel 4 on 5 March.[8]

The shift in the global economic paradigm that Zuboff so meticulously and coruscatingly documents in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is heartbreakingly humanised the destructive effects of Big Tech’s business model on the most interpersonal level. Molly was recorded and monitored for most of her adolescence, particularly after she downloaded Instagram and Pininterest. These apps function by tracking their “users” (drugs and social media – those are the only times they become “users” [“customers,” anybody?] and supplying them with the content that will keep them using. Though clearly struggling and negotiating with the ordinary pressures and unhappiness of adolescence, the algorithms Molly encountered online were tailored by an inhumane mechanism, supplying her content that reflected her unhappiness until it became unbearable.[9]

The coroner at Molly’s inquest ruled that she died “from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content.” The most poignant and powerful testimony in the film comes from Molly’s schoolfriends who concur with the coroner’s verdict. They saw they were shocked to learn after her death how she had been persistently measuring her stomach and looking at so much negative self-imagery. Guiltily, most of them confess they still look at Instagram on their own phones. For Zuboff, they are all victims of the tech monopolies’ strategy: “Where the algorithm senses high levels of engagement, it gives that material pride of place,” she says. “It will amplify it and it will send it out, as happened to Molly in the last months of her young life. She received hundreds of grotesque messages and images depicting suicide and self-harm.” Thus Molly Russell has yet another example of how, in Zuboff’s trenchant words, of how society has sent its precious young “like canaries in the coalmine” into a “death march with the all-seeing algorithm.”[10]

So the short span of Molly’s life parallels the trajectory of the development of the social media platforms, as they first learned to harvest and monetise our private information, then to predict our habits and eventually to shape them. Her story is the haunting backdrop to, and shadow of the “breakthrough idea that human behaviour should be treated as a commodity” [11]the genealogy of which Zuboff has so diligently and starkly chronicled.

The addictive nature of much social media output and their role in fuelling not just the global Triple P virus of Populism, Polarisation and Post-Truth but their assault on privacy and the developmental health of young people has led to a growing national and international clamour for the prohibition of access to social media to young people under the age of sixteen. Just such a ban has been instituted in Australia. Similar restrictions are coming down the track in France and Spain, and at least 15 European governments are looking at comparative measures. Last month, Keir Starmer gave full backing to establishing a consultation for a British minimum age for social media age. 

For Shoshana Zuboff, the iniquity of Big Tech’s attacks on privacy and the democracy of the public square is a moral crusade of our time, comparable to the abolition of slavery and child labour. For her the abolition of the business model behind the MO of the sites that Big Tech runs is essential rather than a mere prohibition for children. A social media ban for children is opposed by Ian Russell, father of Molly, who now chairs the Molly Rose Foundation and has, through grief, become an advocate to the accountability of social media platforms. 

The toxic effects on the developing minds and brains of children and young people of bad actors on social media are undeniable. But should the baby of the totality of digital media be thrown out with the bathwater of the effluent of the sites like the algorithm ones that drove a 14-year-old girl with all her life and potential in front of her to her death? How would such a ban be practically enforced? Human nature being what it is, prohibition always creates the allure of the forbidden fruit for those predisposed to testing boundaries. Is there universal consensus as to the inherent dangers to health of social media sites as there is in relation to tobacco and certain controlled drugs? While child protection must always be an overriding public duty and societal value, can some latitude be afforded to children’s natural curiosity and desire for experimentation? Debate around an under 16 ban still leaves unaddressed the wider harms of the monetised and behaviour altering model of the digital information economy whether in its attention or intention formats. The reclamation of our futures from the empire builders of Silicon Valley has to be an animating cause, even crusade, for our times.
 
References

[1] Jonathan Freedland. Here are the powerful men making racists feel great again. Guardian Journal. 14 February 2026 pp.1-2

[2] John Naughton, Big tach profited from our attention – now AI wants to monetise intentions. The Observer - Science & Tech 22 February 2026 p.19

[3] D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh, and Peter Schmidt, eds. (2026). The Friends of Attention Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement. London: Particular Books p.25

[4] Ibid, pp.25-26

[5] Ibid, p.26

[6] Ibid, pp.33-35

[7] Naughton, op cit.

[8] Abolition is the correct response to a moral catastrophe. The Observer - Interview 22 February 2026 pp.17-18

[9] Nicholas Harris. The cost of an online childhood. New Statesman -Television 27 February – 5 March 2026 pp. 60-61

[10] Observer - Interview, p.18

[11] Ibid 

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

It’s The Attention Economy, Stupid 🪶 The World Of Information Dystopia And Its Human Casualties

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Eight Hundred And Ninety Nine

 

A Morning Thought @ 3075

Maryam Namazie 🎤 This is an edited transcript of Rod Liddle’s interview with Maryam Namazie on Iran protests, Times Radio, 17-January-2026.


Rod Liddle: The uprising or revolution whatever you want to call it in Iran seems to be at something of a crossroads. The Iranian regime has not it as it suggested executed any of the protesters it has arrested, nor has there been a continuation of the violent repression which has seen as many as 12,000 people killed in the totalitarian Islamic republic. But the protests seem to have subsided too, and one begins to wonder if what the West was heralding as the final toppling of the brutal clerical rule in Iran may simply have been another outpouring of anger quickly stilled from the benighted people of that country.

Maryam Namazie is an Iranian dissident who has lived in London for many years, a Marxist, she was a member of the Iranian Worker-Communist Party and she has seen many uprisings before, subjected to a fatwa by the mullahs, she has also faced threats from the Iranian regime. I asked her if the uprising was now dwindling a little.

Maryam Namazie: There is a generation now in Iran that will not tolerate an Islamic theocracy. They don’t buy into Islamic reform, Islamic feminism, Islamic democracy. They don’t accept a reformist so-called faction of the Islamic regime of Iran; they don’t want a theocracy. It’s a movement and protest that needs to be supported across the globe, not of course by regime change from above. It’s a very important movement. My heart goes out and my condolences goes out to all those who’ve lost family members and loved ones. There have been huge amounts of killings. People are talking about massacres that have taken place. The numbers are unclear. There are reports of over 12,000 people being killed.

Over here, this has been portrayed as a revolution which has been provoked largely not by the ideological objection to an Islamic theocracy but through economic necessity as the economy has crashed and people are broke. My point is, however, that the economic catastrophe is part and parcel of a catastrophe and crisis when it comes to personal and civil liberties as well. Every aspect of people’s lives is in crisis because of this regime – either it’s mismanagement, its corruption or its all-out repression; the fact that a theocracy is antithetical to the lives of 21st century human beings.

You can’t foresee when this regime is going to end but that break has been made and there is no turning back from where the people of Iran are today. They don’t want a theocracy.

Rod Liddle: There are these appalling things happening. 12,000 dead, you say, a violent authoritarian crackdown on the protests and the threats of hangings, the threats of shootings and so on. And yet you say this must be a revolution which happens from within. Were it not for Donald Trump’s insistence that unless the Iranian revolutionary guard and the government stopped these massacres and ceased any threat to hang protesters then there would be an immediate response from America. That is outside help and it works, doesn’t it?

Maryam Namazie: That is a lot of posturing really to be frank because if you look at a report from a human rights organisation that covers executions in Iran, from the period of January 5-14th, 52 prisoners were executed in 42 prisons. So, the regime has continued their executions and they will continue their executions because this is a regime that has done this for the past 47 years. The political posturing and geopolitical manipulations in various self-interests of governments doesn’t really address the huge catastrophe and tragedy that is taking place for the people of Iran; it doesn’t address human rights.

Rod Liddle: Hang on Maryam, just to pick up one point there. It was said that that one particular Iranian protester, the owner of a clothes shop in Iran was going to be hanged yesterday. Trump intervened and he wasn’t hanged. That’s surely beneficial, isn’t it? That you can’t argue against that, can you?

Maryam Namazie: Erfan Sultani is the person you are referring to. Let’s be clear, there are thousands waiting to be executed. The regime itself has said they have arrested thousands that will be executed as enemies against God. The executions will happen. We’ve had many examples, of course, where public pressure has stopped an execution. Give credit also to a vast diaspora as well as people in Iran and the mass protests of organisations and individuals demanding an end to executions. We can’t give credit only to Donald Trump for this.

Rod Liddle: I wasn’t suggesting you give credit only to Donald Trump. You talk about all these executions and the murder of so many people. Doesn’t that beg for outside interference to stop that murder?

Maryam Namazie: It does. Of course, you’re right. It does beg for outside interference in the sense that it begs for solidarity and support for the people of Iran in this revolution that is underway. But I think the question is whether US militarism is the solution. If we look at the region, if we look at Afghanistan, if you look at Iraq, if we look at what is happening in Syria for example, this is not the solution. Also, in the Palestinian territories. Militarism is not the solution to bringing peace and prosperity and rights for the people of Iran who deserve a lot more than that. For me, when Donald Trump postures and says he stopped 800 executions, therefore he’s not going to intervene – these are geopolitical posturings. What governments can do is not to impose regime change from above, but to actually stop providing support directly or indirectly to the Islamic regime of Iran. Why are the Islamic regime of Iran’s embassies still open? Why are the assets of the revolutionary guards not being seized? Why are government officials that travel outside not arrested for crimes against humanity? I think there are so many political and diplomatic measures to put this regime under intense pressure that isn’t happening. There’s a lot of sloganeering, a lot of statements and hashtags, but nothing that really helps the people of Iran. And the other issue is the communication and internet blackout. We know that when the regime does this, it is because it is slaughtering people and doesn’t want witnesses. It has imposed martial law. It has issued a statement to say that anybody who is publicising information about what’s happening in Iran will be executed as a spy for Israel and the United States. So opening Starlink, opening up communications, cyber intelligence against the regime… All of these are ways in which pressure could be brought on the regime and people of Iran supported in order to continue their revolutionary movement against a theocracy. I mean this is Handmaid’s Tale in real life.

Rod Liddle: Are the people of Iran, the people who are taking part in these demonstrations, are they fully behind the son of the Shah? And are we being told the truth over here when we’re told that they wish for his return to the country and that he might mediate and provide some sort of government in the future?

Maryam Namazie: In all honesty, monarchists are a political trend in Iran, as are communists, as are secularists, as are Republicans. Iran is a huge country of 90 million people with a vast plurality of backgrounds as well as opinions. It is now portrayed as if “Long Live the King” is the main slogan of people in Iran and the Woman, Life, Freedom revolution has been rebranded as an Iranian national revolution by a diaspora media like Iran International. These are all posturings in order to impose regime change from above and to contain a Woman, Life, Freedom revolution that doesn’t want the same old, same old. We don’t want to move from the Shah’s dictatorship to an Islamic dictatorship to another form of dictatorship. People in Iran deserve better. And I personally wouldn’t accept any diaspora leader. There is a huge movement in Iran, progressive, secular, modern. Evin prison and prisons across Iran are filled with political prisoners, women and men who have been campaigning and organising for decades for people’s civil rights and for an end to this regime. The leadership of Iran, the future of Iran is going to be female. It’s going to be secular. And the leadership of this movement is going to be found in Iran, not abroad and not in some exiled prince who’s living off the money his father stole.

Reza Pahlavi has dreams of reinstating a monarchy, that was oppressive. I’ve even had to go to the police not only about threats that I faced from the Islamic regime of Iran, but threats from his supporters. In the diaspora, the monarchists have beaten up opponents, broken PA systems of others, torn down banners of any opposition that doesn’t support the monarchy. They have threatened to find me and kill me because I don’t agree with the monarchy. Reza Pahlavi is not going to be a change for us. They defend Savak, the old Shah’s secret police and say that it didn’t go far enough. Once of their slogans is “death to Mullahs, Leftists and Mojahedin.” Of course, you can be against any ideology and any system but to call for the death of people is incitement to violence. I don’t agree with the Mojahedin. I wouldn’t even accept any leftist leader from abroad taking over the leadership in Iran, even though I am on the left. Because the future leaders of Iran are in Iran itself, not the diaspora. With all its threats and violence, the monarchist opposition gives us very clear signals of what they intend to do when they return to Iran. Will we even be able to return to Iran if they come to power? That’s a big question for a lot of us in the diaspora that don’t support the monarchy. I think people in Iran have a right to finally – after 100 years of dictatorship – decide their own fate.

Rod Liddle: Well, there you are. That was Maryam Namazie, Iranian dissident who I spoke to late last night. And at this very moment, she’s on a demonstration in Paris.

The above is an edited interview with Times Radio.

Maryam Namazie is a political activist, campaigner and blogger

After 100 years Of Dictatorship, People In Iran Have A Right To Decide Their Own Fate

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