Yesterday the EU Delegation in #Iraq along with the embassies of the UK & Canada raised the rainbow flag in Baghdad to mark #IDAHOBIT2020 sparking outrage and bewilderment.

Here are some thoughts on why this was a cynical rather than a principled act: Scholars of gender & sexuality who use a postcolonial lens in their analysis have written extensively on how LGBT rights are being employed to entrench new hierarchies and power dynamics in international relations

Today I witnessed the true horror of forced "immigration removals" on a flight out of Heathrow. A Bangladeshi man was screaming bloody murder as four white guards assured passengers that he'd stop screaming for his life when we took off. The majority of white passenger put their headphones in to block out the man's pleas for help and that he's being taken away from him wife and kids. The few times they said anything was to make sure the man's gonna have guards with him the whole flight.

The brutal murder of #JamalKhashoggi is less about a fearless journalist being silenced and more about a royal court insider who knew too much. There is a distinction. The real Jamal wrote in Arabic defending Saudi's most henious crimes. What happened to him is absolutely brutal and tragic and shows the lengths to which Riyadh will go to eliminate threats against the regime. Jamal was a regime insider for the longest of times, making him potentially more dangerous.