For my friends in Afghanistan, please download these apps to improve your digital security and reduce the ability of the Taliban to track you.

Secure Messaging and Email:

I recommend:

Signal

https://signal.org/en/

Protonmail

https://protonmail.com/

For Web Browsing:

TOR

https://www.torproject.org/

Brave:

https://brave.com/

For VPNs:

https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/choosing-vpn-thats-right-you

Happy Independence Day America! Don't Let The Haters Win!

One f the realities of being an American is that you can both love this country and at the same time acknowledge its imperfect past. One of the other realities is that this imperfect past is not in a shape or form uniquely American.

Slavery and genocide are not an American invention, anybody who understands a bit of world history or lived anywhere else knows this. Mauretania which is an Arab country outlawed Slavery in 1981, 120 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States and if you step outside your bubble for a bit, this country is a pretty good place to live by comparison to MOST countries on this planet. Especially for a country with a population of more than 300 million people who are not in a shape or form homogeneous. Should have America outlawed slavery earlier? Of course. But that doesn't change the fact that this country has made amazing progress on these fronts and there is still work to be done and it has the foundation to make it happen. Also, we can't judge things by the morality of today. Most of the clothes we wear TODAY are made by slave labor in China and other places. I am pretty sure the generations after us will find what we are doing CURRENTLY is amazingly morally abhorrent buy that doesn't mean everything we do is. There is a version of moral idealism today that is pretty much not that different from cynicism and is borderline idiotic. And it does nothing productive other than a bunch of hashtags and claims of moral superiority. Screw these people and enjoy your God/nature-given rights (whatever you happen to believe in because this is a free country) and celebrate the country that produced 3 of the most effective vaccines to combat covid and it continues to be a shining light to countries and people around the world.

#happy4thofjuly to all my fellow Americans and enjoy it to the Max. Don't let the haters win.

10 Year Anniversary

Ten years ago around this time, I started a Facebook page that changed the direction of my life. (Now called

Global Conversations).

I got my first like 30 minutes later and it was from a friend and then some magic happened, the page started growing by 1000 people almost every week, and a year later, I started getting requests from scientists, journalists, political experts to share their content.

The page is run in English, I was hiding my name for security reasons and people were shocked every time they got to know that the person behind it was an Iraqi student and refugee living in Malaysia.

When I landed in America in 2013, I started getting 100s of requests from people asking me to meet up which happens until today which is still surprising, I also started getting invited to lots of events and conferences because of it.

One of the first people was

Iraj Isaac Rahmim

, he offered to give a tour of Rice University and downtown Houston (I thought this was too good to be true, then I asked myself, (I am from Iraq, what could go wrong?) and yes it was true, I met Mr. Iraj, he gave me a tour and we had a burger and then he dropped me home, then I met

Vic Wang

,

Daniel Bailey

who is a pilot at United Airlines who told me that his daughter follows my page and she introduced it to him.

I started meeting countless other people (some of whom Identify as "fans") and I was like what? I have fans? which is still the feeling I have until today.

A few months later that year, a family in Virginia which also follows my page invited me and bought me a ticket to celebrate the fourth of July in Washington DC. (Again, I also thought this was too good to b true but the ticket was real and this family now are my closest friends, I lived with them for almost a year and visit every time I have a chance. lately, I stayed with them during the first months of COVID and I consider them to be my American family.

The impact this page has and the amazing and wonderful people I met through this page (some of them now are co-workers like

Ahmed Fouad Mohammed

) and some of them now are my exes (half-joking).

The page became part of

Ideas Beyond Borders

which a registered and established organization in New York City and the United States since 2017.

Life is interesting.

Random Thoughts about What Happened in Beirut

Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon

Three countries with amazing human capital, history, and resources ruined by corruption, sectarianism, and war.

You come to the US or any other developed nation and you see the Lebanese (generally) the same can be said about Iraqis, and Syrians to some extent, studying at the top universities. Becoming doctors, engineers, lawyers, real estate agents, business leaders, and everything in between, excelling and capturing any opportunity they can find.

If the people there are just allowed to breathe, given the opportunity and the ecosystem to do something productive, they have the potential of becoming something much better than they are today and even better than they were before.

But then you have corrupt sectarian parties that care more about destruction than construction. They care more about their ideologies and money than they care about their people.

They need to be stopped immediately in any way possible.

They are not only "part of the problem".

They are the problem.

I truly believe in the potential of Lebanese people to restore and rebuild their beautiful country if the world stands with them.

It's one of the best investments of our time if we do it right.

May the spirit of the Lebanese people continues to be a shining light for the middle east and the whole world.

When Saddam Invaded Kuwait

30 years ago, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and lost very badly.

I didn't know that was true until 2004 (14 years later) I watched a documentary (I think it was on national geographic) talking about the first gulf war from a different perspective and I remember being shocked.

We were taught that the battle is called "أم المعارك" aka "mother of all battles" and Iraq actually WON that war against 33 aggressors.

We only had 3 channels in Iraq back then and all of them were owned by the state.

Satellite television was not allowed if you were not well connected and know how to hide the equipment.

There is so much talk these days about "fake news" and disinformation on social media.

For most of us who were born and raised in Iraq disinformation campaigns were the norm.

I am sure it's the case for many other authoritarian countries and not just in Iraq.

That's why I have made it the mission of my life to combat propaganda and misinformation from authoritarian states and I believe that critical thinking and media literacy are some of the best ways to combat them.

We need to teach the next generations HOW to think not just WHAT to think.

دليل فرانس برس لتجنب الوقوع في فخ الاخبار الكاذبة

Ideas Beyond Borders - Translating the Internet into Arabic