COMMENT: On January 22, 2026, TikTok handed American control to a consortium of Larry Ellison's Oracle and an Abu Dhabi state fund called MGX. Ellison has given $26 million to Israel's military since 2014. MGX is chaired by the UAE's national security adviser, a country that criminalizes dissent, tortures prisoners, and surveils residents. The White House called it a national security win. For others it's a consolidation of power designed to silence. The First Amendment and Section 230 now shield these new gatekeepers from accountability.
BOOK: In Art against Artillery: Voices of Resilience, Ukrainian journalist Olha Volynska documents how artists, musicians and theatre makers continue to create under bombardment and displacement. The book reveals culture as both survival and resistance, showing how stages, galleries and rehearsal rooms become frontline spaces for defending memory, truth and the right to exist as a people.
COMMENTARY: The Trump administration’s withdrawal from key digital‑rights and cultural‑governance bodies exposes a sharp clash of political visions. On one side, the United States casts multilateral institutions as vehicles of “global governance” and “progressive ideology” that threaten national sovereignty. On the other, Norway treats the very same organizations as essential infrastructure for protecting human rights, artistic freedom and cultural heritage.
(public domain picture of Alfred Nobel) María Corina Machado is celebrated as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and symbol of resistance to Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian rule. Yet her closest international alliances lie not with centrist democrats, but with a hard transnational right stretching from Washington to Madrid, Rome and Jerusalem. Mimeta examines how this shapes the meaning of “freedom” in and beyond Venezuela.
