Munaeem's Blog

 The debate around Gaza has become so hostile that a single sentence can ignite a political storm. One online remark accused Zohran Mamdani of being “antisemitic as hell” and claimed that any Jewish supporter of his was a “useful idiot.” This line shows how false antisemitism accusations now shape American politics. In the weeks after Gaza, many Muslims who speak for Palestinian rights face instant suspicion. Many Jews who stand beside them are told they are naïve. The climate resembles past eras when dissent itself was treated as disloyalty. Zohran Mamdani, the progressive mayor of New York City, has never attacked Jewish people. His speeches, public record, and alliances consistently show respect for Jewish faith and identity. He has marched with Jewish activists, joined interfaith events, and drawn a clear distinction between opposing Israeli government policies and opposing Jewish communities. The claim that he “hates Jews” exists only because he criticises Israeli actions in...

  A British journalist disappears in America — and London says nothing. Where is the UK government? One of their citizens, a journalist, has been detained in the United States — without charge, without transparency, and without a word from Westminster. Sami Hamdi, a respected British journalist known for his sharp criticism of Israeli policies and vocal defense of Palestinian rights, has vanished into the machinery of U.S. immigration enforcement. The facts are chilling. Hamdi had been in the country for several days. He was about to take a domestic flight from San Francisco to Florida when plainclothes ICE agents approached him. They told him his visa had been revoked. He offered to leave voluntarily — to board a flight back to London. But they refused. Instead, they took him away in a black van. No charges, no due process. Just silence. What do you call that? Some call it an arrest. Others — an abduction. A user named @asielmundo said it best: “If his visa was revoked, the...

   His rise wasn’t an accident. It was the mirror image of a society built on spectacle and survival. It’s easy to blame one man. It’s harder to admit the truth — that America didn’t just elect Donald Trump. It produced him. For decades, New Yorkers knew him as a loud, ruthless developer. He stiffed contractors, ran a fake university, and used his charity like a personal bank account. He was sued thousands of times and still found time to host a reality show. By the time The Apprentice hit TV, Trump had mastered the art of American illusion — turning scandal into spectacle, greed into charisma. So when people ask, how could Americans choose such a man? the answer is simpler and darker: because he looked like the America they had built. The Celebrity President Trump didn’t win on policy. He won on personality. His rallies felt like rock concerts; his insults, entertainment. Millions who felt abandoned by the establishment saw in him a kind of revenge fantasy — a ma...

 Behind the bold numbers lies a harder truth — peace is not a spreadsheet, and borders do not obey promises. When a Twitter commentator claimed that “Pakistan’s Afghanistan campaign will cut terrorism by 82 percent in 24 months and generate $40 billion in economic activity,” it caught fire. The post made rounds in political circles and WhatsApp groups. It was bold, patriotic — and wildly optimistic. Still, it tapped into a yearning every Pakistani knows: the hope that one decisive policy could finally bring order to our western frontier. The Promise Supporters of the government’s latest campaign — the deportation of undocumented Afghan nationals and renewed military operations in border regions — say the results will be transformative. They talk of secure borders, reopened trade routes, millions of new jobs, and foreign investors flocking back. The logic is simple: if terrorism drops, confidence returns. Peace is profitable. It sounds neat. But reality rarely follows a Pow...

  When tabloid framing meets policy nuance, truth gets lost in translation. The New York Post splashed a front-page headline that read: “Mamdani says ‘white neighborhoods’ should pay higher property taxes. The Price is White.” It looked like a race-baiting soundbite. But was it? Background Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s first Muslim-Ugandan-born mayoral candidate, has built his campaign around economic equity. In a policy memo, he proposed shifting the city’s property-tax burden “from overtaxed homeowners in outer boroughs to richer and whiter neighborhoods.” That line was enough for tabloids to pounce. The Post headline went viral. Social media called it “reverse racism.” The nuance was gone. What He Actually Said Mamdani’s argument wasn’t about race for its own sake. He pointed out that New York’s property-tax system has long favored wealthy districts — many of which happen to be majority white — while working-class communities pay proportionally more. “The issue i...

 From SWIFT screens to Shanghai settlements, the global payment order is quietly rewiring itself. I spend my mornings looking at screens most people never see. Payment messages, routing codes, currency conversions — the hidden arteries of the global economy. And lately, something strange keeps showing up in those arteries: fewer dollars, more yuan. What used to be routine — USD-cleared transactions passing through New York — now comes with an asterisk. Banks and corporates are experimenting, building backup corridors. Russia and China are no longer waiting for permission from the West. They’re already living in a post-SWIFT reality. A Parallel World in Motion From where I sit in Karachi, I can trace the pattern. Before 2022, almost every major trade flow between Moscow and Beijing moved through the dollar. Now, over 90 percent of their transactions are settled in local currencies — the ruble and the yuan . It’s not just a political choice. It’s a survival mechanism. Whe...

  When billionaires fund chaos and politicians trade morality for power, it’s the working class that pays the bill. Donald Trump has turned America into a theater where power mocks poverty. Hedge funders bankroll elections, food aid vanishes overnight, and presidents throw parties while millions lose their meals. The same week forty-two million low-income Americans were cut from food assistance, the president hosted a Great Gatsby-themed bash. It was a metaphor for the new America: the rich toasting each other as the floor collapses beneath everyone else. Background The Guardian’s Aditya Chakrabortty calls this the “Yeltsin stage” of the American empire — an age where the buffoon leads while oligarchs carve up the spoils behind him. For all the talk of freedom and democracy, money decides outcomes, and those outcomes are turning brutal. From the Bronx to Baltimore, ordinary citizens are exhausted. Bills rise, wages stall, housing shrinks. The middle class is squeezed by the...

  Why Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s grip on power survives—and what it costs ordinary Turks. In the summer heat of Istanbul, crowds still find their way to the squares. Some hold faded party flags; others just stand there, silent. They’ve learned that shouting can land you in jail. Yet they come. Because somewhere under the slogans and fear, a memory of democracy still flickers. The Strongman’s Bargain Just days after protesters filled Turkey’s streets to oppose another crackdown, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was photographed smiling beside Donald Trump at the White House. Behind that photo was a price: orders for Boeing planes , F-16s , and a 20-year deal to buy U.S. liquefied natural gas. That image—one leader grinning, the other calculating—captured Erdoğan’s method perfectly. He trades what the West needs most— location, soldiers, stability —for what he needs most: silence. Europe Looked the Other Way Back in 2016 , the European Union handed Ankara €6 billion to keep millions of ...

 How raids on immigrants reveal a nation losing its moral compass They used to call it the land of the free. A place where families came chasing sunlight, where a child could grow up with two languages and still belong. But lately, America looks less like a promise and more like a fortress, armored from the inside out. When ICE trucks roll into quiet neighborhoods before dawn, what happens isn’t law enforcement. It is theatre. Cameras, lights, uniforms, all performing security while fear does the real work. Mothers hide behind blinds. Children whisper in kitchens. Fathers keep bags packed by the door. And still, politicians call it protection. The Spectacle of Control In Chicago, where lakeside beauty meets blue-collar resolve, federal agents have been playing out a strange war story. ICE patrols slip through suburbs like Broadview, “wriggling daily from their hidey-holes,” as one writer put it, terrorizing and kidnapping residents. It is all sold as part of a grand crusade to “sav...

Gerrymandering, race, and cultural recoil are turning the United States into two nations trapped in one flag. Once upon a time, Democrats and Republicans shared the same map. They argued, they bargained, and they still governed together. That America is gone. A recent CNN analysis lays it bare. In 1989, Democrats held 40 of 76 Senate seats and 21 of 38 governorships in states that had voted for Reagan or Bush. Today, they hold virtually none. The same goes in reverse — Republicans are almost extinct across the solid-blue coasts. America has sorted itself into two political planets orbiting in opposite directions. The New Geography of Power Twenty-five states now form the hard Republican bloc — the “Trump 25.” Nineteen make up the Democratic “anti-Trump” camp. Between them lies a vanishing strip of swing ground. The numbers show how democracy fractures when geography hardens. In 2024, 26.8 million Americans in Trump states voted Democrat. The same number of Republicans voted in the blue...

  Geopolitical Fights and Supply Breaks Hit Production Hard Europe's car makers lead the world in quality builds. Now a small chip threatens to stop them cold. BMW sent out a stark alert last month. A big shortage of semiconductors might shut down its factories soon. This problem spreads wide. It ties into trade fights and broken supply lines. Cars need these chips for everything from engines to lights. Look at this tiny part.  It fits on your fingertip. Yet without it, assembly lines grind to a halt. BMW makes over two million cars each year. A stop would cut that number fast. Other brands feel the pain too. Volkswagen and Mercedes face the same risk. Suppliers like ZF cut shifts in Germany already. They blame the lack of key chips. The trouble starts with Nexperia. This Dutch firm makes vital semiconductors. China owns it through Wingtech. Dutch leaders took over the company in October. They cited theft of secrets and safety risks. China hit back hard. Beijing banned exports...

  They say Russia must end its occupation of Ukraine, Georgia, and parts of Africa. Fair enough. But it makes me think of something else. When the West speaks about “liberation” or “defense of democracy,” what does it really mean? I have seen too many headlines that sound noble and end in rubble. The Mirror We Refuse to Face Take Iraq. The invasion that promised freedom left more than a million people dead and a generation without homes. Libya, once stable if repressive, was turned into a marketplace for human trafficking. Afghanistan was abandoned after twenty years of “nation-building,” leaving behind chaos and broken promises. The tools are different but the method is the same. Airstrikes instead of tanks. Sanctions instead of soldiers. Loans and “partnerships” instead of open control. Yet the result is still dependence, still humiliation, still the loss of dignity for ordinary people. A Softer Vocabulary for the Same Idea Russia uses words like “security” and “protecti...

 To be published on medium.com From Cuba to Climate, the world’s most powerful democracy keeps saying no to the very idea of collective welfare When you scan the roll calls at the United Nations, one country keeps turning up on the lonely end of the tally. Against the “Right to Development.” Against ending the embargo on Cuba. Against the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Even against the International Day of Peaceful Coexistence. It’s the United States—the self-proclaimed leader of the free world, the model democracy. And yet, time and again, Washington’s votes speak less of freedom and more of a deep discomfort with equality, solidarity, and global responsibility. The pattern behind the “No” Look closely, and a pattern forms. In November 2024, the U.S. voted against the UN resolution recognizing the Right to Development —a principle that every human being has a right to participate in, contribute to, and benefit from economic, social, cultural, and political develop...

  Because airfares should reward experience, not confusion When my friend Richard, a retired airport staffer, told me how people book tickets, I laughed and winced at the same time. “They don’t book flights,” he said, “they wrestle algorithms.” He’s right. What used to be a clear price board is now a shifting target. You check a fare on Monday, and by Wednesday it’s higher. Then on Thursday afternoon, mysteriously, it drops again. Seniors, who often book calmly and early, are usually the first to pay more simply because the system predicts they will. But the good news is, you can outsmart it. The Game Airlines Don’t Admit Exists Airline pricing runs on dynamic algorithms , meaning fares change constantly based on demand, cookies, browsing history, and even your location. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Transportation confirmed that airlines use Revenue Management Systems to predict “willingness to pay” based on search patterns. If you check a route multiple times, the sy...

  A strange kind of poll keeps appearing on social media these days. You’ve probably seen them — posts that ask “Who’s the real enemy of America?” and list options like “The Left,” “Islam,” “Russia,” or “China.” They look like casual opinion games. They’re not. These polls are part of a much larger pattern — the gamification of hate . The Hidden Purpose They’re not meant to measure public opinion. They’re designed to shape it. Every such poll forces people into a moral corner: either you’re “with us,” or you’re “against us.” That binary framing isn’t about truth; it’s about loyalty. And loyalty sells — to algorithms, to influencers, and to political machines that feed off division. Accounts that post such content — like the “Ivanka Trump News” fan page that recently asked followers to pick America’s “most dangerous enemy” — know exactly what they’re doing. They trade outrage for reach. Every comment, angry or supportive, boosts their visibility. It’s emotional clickb...

  When Nvidia quietly bought a 2.9 percent stake in Nokia this week, few noticed how strategic the move was. A billion dollars isn’t charity. It’s chess. For years, Nvidia has ruled the world of artificial intelligence through its chips and data centers. But AI doesn’t just live in silicon anymore. It needs fast, adaptive networks that can move information as quickly as it’s computed. That is where Nokia comes in. From Phones to Fiber Many still remember Nokia for the indestructible 3310 and the slogan “Connecting People.” The phones are gone, but the idea remains. Nokia now connects the world in a deeper way — through 5G towers, optical networks, and internet backbones. It is the second largest telecommunications company in the world, holding over seven thousand patents in 5G alone. While most think Nokia disappeared when Microsoft bought its mobile division in 2014, the real company survived. Under CEO Rajeev Suri, Nokia reinvented itself between 2014 and 2020, buying Alcate...

Israel’s ever-shifting borders reveal a deeper logic: the idea of Greater Israel. Drawing on historical Zionism, modern settlement policy and Islamic-prophetic interpretations advanced by Dr Israr Ahmed, this blog unpacks what lies ahead for Palestinians and the wider Middle East. Introduction Did you know that Israel has never fully defined its borders? Most nations show on official maps exactly where their sovereignty begins and ends—but Israel does not. Its borders with Egypt and Jordan were first drawn as armistice lines after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, later formalised through peace treaties in 1979 and 1994. But its boundaries with Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank remain vague or unrecognised. Even within Israel itself, there is no official map showing clearly agreed national boundaries. This ambiguity is not accidental. As long as Israel’s borders aren’t set in stone, they can continue to shift. This is the story of a borderless project—the Zionist vision of Greater ...