Before pandemic without restrictions or lockdowns, I rarely paid any attention to the rabbit hole that is reality television. I had watched a few episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, very early on, in 2009 or 2010 and decided it was not for me, but every now and then read about them and admired their brilliant marketing and public relations’ strategies. However, since the lockdowns and restrictions, it is a whole new world and clearly, I am living a different life, wherein reality television makes up a big portion of my source of entertainment besides news about protests by anti-vaxxers, I must admit anti-vaxxers protesting and shouting “Freedom” is the funniest thing that one could ever watch. Anyway, coming back to the topic at hand, reality television, no doubt it is soul sucking, but very addictive at the same time.Two years ago, had someone told me that I would one day watch shows like Shahs of Sunset, Million Dollar Listings New York, Los Angeles, Married to Medicine, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta and not to forget Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, I would have thought that that someone was either insane or was on the verge of insanity, but here I am, amidst a pandemic, watching all these shows on a repeat on my tablet, whilst the news plays on TV. I am sure it is an open secret that these shows may or may not be staged, I am not saying these are scripted shows, but more like staged, where the cast mates are pushed to go in a certain direction by their producers, in order to produce enticing content and to hook the audience in on their drama. Also, can we be honest and talk about the lifestyle that is shown in these “reality” shows? The costumes, the mansions, the dinners, the shopping sprees, the parties, the cars, are you kidding me? I do not and cannot believe that this is their real life!

First topic that I want to discuss is, Emmanuel Macron, the President of French Republic, claims to be a champion of free speech, in an interview to Al Jazeera in October 2020, he had said “I will always defend in my country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw”. There is no doubt that some truly condemnable and atrocious incidents took place in France in the name of religion and one might even be sympathetic to Macron’s rallying against elements of French society that may have sought to undermine the very noble principle of free speech, except, Macron’s hypocrisy seems to know no bounds when it comes to not practising what he preaches.When talking about Macron, George Orwell’s 1984 and the phrase “Doublethink” comes to mind, in the novel this phrase meant the ability to hold two completely contradictory beliefs at the same time and to believe that they were both true. In Macron’s case, he somehow seems to believe that he could be a champion of Free Speech whilst actively undermining the very same principle that he publicly professes to hold so dear.The other topic that I discuss is Syrian Civil War, the conflict in Syria started over 10 years ago resulting in millions of people being displaced and countless lives being lost. Most people across the globe have a very polarised view of the Syrian conflict, there are some who believe Bashar Al Assad is a monster and should be removed at any cost and then there are those who believe Syrian Civil War was and is Syria’s internal matter and no external power should interfere in a sovereign country’s internal matters. This polarisation gets even steep when it comes to the Muslim World, because most Muslims don’t just see this as a conflict between a ruler and his subjects, to some Muslims it becomes a conflict between a Shiite dictator and an oppressed Sunni population and to other Muslims this becomes a clash between Saudi Inspired Wahhabi ideology and a Head of State who is trying to protect his diverse population from anarchy. 

I am a die-hard capitalist at heart, I love the concept of free-market economy, limited government and a thriving middle class that benefits from a fair and free market. However, lately, United States and its allies have been using the buzzwords like “Protection of Rules- Based International Order”, at times explicitly and sometimes implicitly to express the “challenge” that a strong China might pose to the liberal democracies and their “Rules-Based International Order”- in place since post war era and often phrases like these are used in front of the media to convey how its crucial more than ever before for these countries to work together and face that “challenge”, united. In theory this sounds like a noble cause, for people like me who believe in capitalism, because after all, China is governed by a Communist regime that allows little to no room for values that these liberal democracies supposedly cherish the most, including free-market economy, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom to peaceful assembly and freedom to practice religion or not. However, in reality, most of these “liberal democracies” have their own issues with the values that they so profess to cherish, for example, United States and its allies have been critical of China’s crackdown on freedom of speech, freedom of press and freedom of assembly in Hong Kong, whilst at the same time, Julian Assange, who exposed war crimes committed by some of these liberal democracies, currently languishes in a high security prison in the U.K and this prison has been known to have hosted terrorists. The United States along with its allies in June 2021 condemned China’s treatment of its Uyghur population in Xinjiang, one of the signatories to this condemnation was Israel and it is widely known that there have been several United Nations’ resolutions passed against Israel for its treatment of Palestinians that have been living under its occupation since 1967.

from time to time, we, in the western liberal democracies, mostly with the best of intentions, from our ivory towers, pick sides rather easily when it comes to politics of Global South, without fully understanding the complexities. Don’t believe me? Think about the co-operation that took place between former dictator of Pakistan, Musharraf and the west in early to mid 2000s, he wasn’t democratically elected, in fact he had ousted a democratically elected Prime Minister of his country in a coup de tat, and the west pretty much rolled out red carpets to him while he gave himself the title of “President”, think about how current dictator of Egypt, Sisi, who ousted a democratically elected politician, Morsi, now gets to shake hands with world leaders, clearly in both of these instances the liberal democracies chose to do business with dictators at the expense of our core values.Therefore, in this blog, I am writing about the supposed political activists or leaders from the Global South that the west is currently siding with and why I think siding with these supposed activists or leaders might be a mistake.Alexei Navalny:Alexei Navalny, currently being hailed as a hero in the west, rose to prominence in Russia by his supposed expose of corruption in Kremlin. Although he ran for the office of mayor in Moscow, he lost. A lot of people in the west do not know that Navalny has never held a public office in Russia, in fact he started in politics as a member of Russian liberal party, Yabloko, only to be expelled from the party for his “nationalist activities”. Aung San Suu Kyi:Prior to the events of 2017 in Myanmar, where its military according to credible international organisations allegedly committed a genocide, Aung San Suu Kyi was hailed as a hero across the globe, because she supposedly stood for Democracy and was even awarded Nobel Peace Prize amongst many other accolades. However, since August 2017, she has not only failed to denounce the crimes committed against Rohingyas but also defended Myanmar’s military in International Court of Justice. Juan Guaido:According to Sanctionskill.Org “Guaidó showed total unrestraint at the use of thug violence to meet his political goals. Before 2019, the only knowledge that the Venezuelan public had of him, outside of his constituency, was that he was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the violent roadblocks that took the country to the brink of civil war in 2017. Numerous photos showed Guaidó, grinning ear to ear, alongside armed fascists who were responsible for the deaths of over a hundred people.”

Nizar Banat, a Palestinian activist, an outspoken critic of Palestinian Authority and its corruption, was murdered on the 24 June 2021, by the Palestinian Preventive Security force – policing arm of the Palestinian Authority, in the occupied West Bank. This isn’t shocking to many who have studied Oslo Accords and have followed Israel-Palestine relationship/conflict over the years. It can be argued that Palestinian Authority since its inception, has acted similar to those “Slave Patrols” in the antebellum United States which were set up with enslaved African Americans to monitor and enforce discipline, at the behest of their white masters, upon their fellow enslaved African Americans. The history of corruption within and by Palestinian Authority (PA) is well documented, recent instances of such corruption include - people in the occupied West Bank who were close to the inner sanctum of PA received COVID vaccines, at the expense of front-line health workers and other essential services’ workers, when there was a shortage of vaccines in general, then there was that scandal of salaries being paid to “employees” of a non-existent Palestinian Airlines, but what often is not widely reported in the mainstream media is its history of collaborating with the State of Israel to suppress and crackdown on any dissent from the people it supposed governs, i.e., Palestinians.  Palestinians in a way face oppression from not only their occupier, but also from people who are supposed to govern them and when an activist like Nizar Banat comes along and openly challenges these corrupt authorities, in a civilised manner, they act with impunity and respond with brute force and violence. In the recent years PA’s dominance over occupied West Bank has been overshadowed by its decades long corruption and its perceived inability to act in a manner that would deliver Palestine its statehood, therefore, there is little doubt that Banat’s assassination wasn’t motivated by political insecurity of Palestinian Authority. The other not so surprising element of Banat’s assassination is its coverage by the mainstream western media, for example: BBC reported, “Prominent Abbas critic dies in PA Custody after ‘vicious beating’ by officers”NBC referred to it as “Outspoken critic of Palestinian Authority Nizar Banat dies after violent arrest”DW News called it “Palestinian Authority critic Nizar Banat dies after arrest”The Times of Israel phrased it as “Activist critical of Palestinian Authority dies after arrest” The thing that is missing from all of these headlines is Banat just didn’t die, he did not have a cardiac arrest, he did not have a stroke, he wasn’t 100 years old and therefore did not “die” of aging. Banat was beaten mercilessly and allegedly with wooden and iron batons by the policing arm of Palestinian Authority, which has a history of violence against its own citizenry and Banat not only dared to speak out against the authority but also challenged them in the elections that were postponed indefinitely by Mahmoud Abbas, who has been the President of Palestinian Authority for over 16 years. Therefore, it can be argued that Banat’s death was an assassination. 

Last year when a BBC journalist while interviewing Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, asked him about the restrictions on free press in his country, he rebuked the reporter and said “You have no moral right to talk about free media when you do these things”, by these things he meant treatment of Julian Assange by the U.K government. It’s been over two years now, since the London Metropolitan Police entered into Ecuadorian Embassy in London and arrested Assange and ever since then he has been languishing in U.K’s high security Belmarsh Prison and many fear that this has taken a toll on his physical and mental health. It’s really sad to see that there hasn’t been a lot of mainstream media coverage of Assange and his current plight, but, hey what do you expect from media houses whose primary motive is to rake in big bucks. So, let’s talk about Assange and how he ended up where he is now. So, if you remember, back in 2010, Assange and Wikileaks along with some major media outlets published 100s and 1000s of documents exposing potential war crimes committed in Afghanistan and Iraq and subsequently in the same year they also published classified U.S embassies’ cables that further embarrassed the U.S government. At the time, many in the U.S government claimed that these leaks would endanger the lives of its operatives on the ground and in the field, however, so far, there hasn’t been any evidence to suggest that has indeed been the case. Let’s take a look back at how some of the most powerful governments in the world went after Assange to appease the most powerful country in the world, and many may find it amusing that the reason initially Assange was arrested in the United Kingdom was not actually for his role in embarrassing the U.S government. So, why was he arrested, you ask? O.K let me take you down the memory lane. In August 2010, the Swedish Prosecutor's Office issued an arrest warrant for Assange accusing him of sexual misconduct. In December 2010 Assange was arrested in London based on the arrest warrant issued by the Swedish authorities In May 2012 - The UK's Supreme Court ruled that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over the allegations of sexual misconduct, however, many including Assange feared that these accusations by Swedish authorities were in fact at the behest of United States and if Assange were to be extradited to Sweden, then he would most certainly end up in the U.S facing trumped up espionage charges.   Therefore, in June 2012, Assange violating his bail conditions, went to Ecuadorian Embassy in London and sought asylum. Subsequently, in August 2012, Ecuador granted him asylum on the grounds that his human rights might be violated if he was extradited. In August 2015, Swedish authorities dropped their investigation into two allegations against Assange, one of sexual molestation and one of unlawful coercion, because they had run out of time to question him. But the more serious accusation of rape wasn’t dropped until May 2017. Between July 2018 and April 2019, many claim that under pressure from the U.S government the Ecuadorian government engaged in talks with the U.K government and finally in April 2019, The London Metropolitan Police entered the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested Assange for "failing to surrender to the court" over a warrant issued in 2012. In May 2019, Assange is sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching his bail conditions from 2012. 

I was scrolling through my twitter feed and came across tweets where some (not all) American progressives were quoting their intelligence community to demonstrate how bad the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, was. The irony of these tweets isn’t lost on anyone. I was a child when America declared its war on terror and subsequently invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. At the time, I barely knew anything about the global geo-politics, but since then I would like to believe that I have learnt a fair-few things and I believe that although America was justified in invading Afghanistan, it should have left soon after neutralising the people who were responsible for 9/11. On the other hand, I do not believe Invasion of Iraq was justified at all, I know some people would say hindsight is 20/20, but if one recalls, there were people even back in 2002, 2003 who opposed the invasion of Iraq and in fact took to the streets to register their dissent against this invasion.If you remember, America under the Presidency of George W. Bush made a case for invasion of Iraq citing intelligence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), since there were no WMDs found post invasion, many blamed the Bush administration for spinning the intelligence to persuade public opinion in favour of the war. However, on the 22 March 2019, almost 16 years after invasion of Iraq, an American journalist, Glenn Kessler in a Washington Post article titled “The Iraq War and WMDs: An intelligence failure or White House Spin?”, with regards to assertions by the Bush administration regarding Saddam’s nuclear capabilities concluded:“Statements by the president, vice president, secretary of state and the national security advisor regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by the intelligence community, but did not convey the substantial disagreements”Also, if you remember, on the 5 February 2003, the then U.S Secretary of States, Colin Powell, delivered a presentation to the United Nations and on slide 20 of that presentation there were drawn up graphics or visuals showing how Iraq had the capability of producing biological weapons using something called “Mobile Production Facilities For Biological Agents”, and in these imaginary drawings, a twelve wheeler truck was depicted carrying some water tanks, that according to Powell could carry biological agents. With regards to these assertions by the Bush administration, Kessler states in the same article:“Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well as additional statements, regarding Iraq’s possession of biological agents, weapons, production capability and use of mobile biological laboratories were substantiated by intelligence information”In an overall conclusion Kessler points out that:“The intelligence community’s assessments on Iraq’s WMD stockpiles and programs turned out to be woefully wrong”This is just an example of the colossal failure of American Intelligence Community and its flawed intelligence that led to invasion of Iraq, followed by significant destruction of not only Iraq but that whole region, because one can argue that the power vacuum that was created by toppling Saddam, directly led to the rise of extremists’ groups in that country and we all know the chaos that these groups caused, including the genocide of Yazidis in Iraq.

So, today I am going to talk about Hong Kong’s popular pro-democracy newspaper/tabloid, Apple Daily, its shutting down this weekend. This comes against the backdrop of 5 of Apple Daily’s editors and executives being arrested by Hong Kong’s authorities under its new Security Law that was introduced a year ago. Now, to understand why and under which charges these 5 editors and executives were arrested, we have to take a step back and unpack the Hong Kong’s new security law and understand what it stands for and how it was passed. The law itself came into effect last year in June just a few hours before the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China from British control. When the city was handed over to China in 1997, it was done so under an agreement called the basic law, which was meant to protect Hong Kong’s freedom to peaceful protests, free speech and independent judiciary amongst some other basic democratic rights, under the same agreement Hong Kong was meant to pass its own national security law but that never happened because residents of the city did not want it and did not support such a law. In fact, in back in 2003 there was an attempt to pass national security law in Hong Kong and the people took to the streets protesting against it and it never came to fruition. So, this time around when the law was passed, in June 2020, not many people were aware of its provisions and it was passed under secrecy and some of the key provisions of this security law are Crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, which are very vague phrases and according to the text of this law, it is applicable to not only the residents of the city but also to non-residents and also to people who do not live in the city, and people fear that the whole law could mean anything. 

As I was scrolling through my twitter feed this morning, I came across tweets claiming that Press TV’s websites, which is an Iranian news channel, were seized by the United States. I am someone who do not usually just believe everything I read on social media, so I decided to do some research. Obviously, I first went to PressTV.Com and there indeed I found a message that read “The domain presstv.com has been seized by the United States Government in accordance with a seizure warrant issued…….by the Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement and Federal Bureau of Investigation”, again I thought this could just be some hackers trying to provoke two countries who have been at odds for decades. So, the next thing I did was, I went to the U.S Department of Justice’ website, which is also called DOJ in short, and there I found a statement that was dated Tuesday, the 22 June 2021 and in that statement, DOJ, indeed announced seizing 33 websites “used by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU)”. For the context, In October 2020, Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of Treasury, in short OFAC, that administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on U.S foreign policy and national security goals designated IRTVU as a “Specially Designated National (SDN)” for “attempting to influence elections in the United States”.  Now, you may ask what is an SDN, so, according to U.S Department of the Treasury, SDNs are “individuals and companies owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of, targeted countries” and of course in this case the targeted country is Iran, because Iran has been under U.S sanctions for decades and the SDN is IRTVU for allegedly acting on behalf of Iran to “subvert U.S democratic processes” and under the U.S law, SDNs are prohibited from obtaining services, including website and domain services, in the United States without an OFAC licence. Against this backdrop the U.S Justice Department announced seizing these 33 websites. The U.S DOJ also seized three additional websites which were allegedly operated by “Kata’ib Hizballah”, which is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation by U.S State Department and an SDN by OFAC since July 2009. However, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson refuting American claims said that this act of website seizure by the United States was a systematic effort to disrupt freedom of expression and make silent the independent voices in media spaces and commenting further stated that Iran would follow up the case via legal channels. In my honest opinion, the timing of this seizure of websites by the United States seems a little more than just enforcing sanctions, it appears to me that this a pressure tactic by the U.S on Iran, because Iran just had its presidential elections and elected a “hardliner”, Ebrahim Raisi, who has been quoted as saying that unlike Hassan Rouhani he won’t put all his eggs in one basket, by that he meant he won’t just rely on JCPOA for economic recovery and instead he would form alliances with countries in the region and elsewhere and potentially develop domestic economy. Also, if America’s goal was to only enforce sanctions, it could have done that last year soon after designating IRTVU as an SDN. To me personally, it appears that Biden administration is sending a message to Iran’s government and wants to demonstrate that the U.S is still in charge. 

On the 16 June 2021 U.S President Biden met with his Russian Counterpart President Putin in Geneva, Switzerland. Soon after this meeting, the President of the United States addressing the press corp in an effort to declare Putin as gone rogue, innocently declared “his credibility worldwide shrinks” and then he went on to again very naively question “how would it be if United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries and everybody knew it? What would it be like if we engaged in activities that he engaged in? it diminishes the standing of a country?”  So, Biden is literally saying that (A) Russia has interfered in other countries’ elections including the U.S and (B) that the U.S has not interfered in other countries elections. Hmm are we missing something. Like really, like honestly, who is President Biden kidding? Does he really think that America has not interfered in other countries’ elections? Does he really think that America does not continue to interfere in other countries’ elections? OK! Right off the bat I wanna make it clear that pointing out American interference in other countries’ elections does not mean siding with Russia, so on that note, let’s take a look at America’s glorious history of interfering in other countries and other countries’ elections starting from the Middle East.