Category Politics

1MDB Anwar Ibrahim Mahathir Mohamad Malaysia Najib Razak Pakatan Harapan Politics UMNO United Malays National Organisation

Shhh… My Question to Anwar Ibrahim In Our First Meeting

Vanson Soo 0 Comment

I asked Anwar Ibrahim if he knew why Mahathir Mohamad put him behind bars when I first met him in person at an event in Hong Kong mid 2005, shortly after his first release from prison.

He was startled by my blunt question, held his breath and responded politely with a smile.

“Oh, please tell me.”

The seasoned politician managed to hold his composure. My guess was he figured I got to be serious or…..

“He saw you in a tee with the word BOSSINI printed on the front,” I said.

Now Anwar was ever more intrigued and stared hard at me with a Tell Me More look.

I then explained how the former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir saw the hidden meaning behind BOSSINI (a Hong Kong clothing brand that was popular across Southeast Asia then).

“He read it as BOSS INI,” I said – which means “I’m the Boss” in Malay.

You can imagine how Anwar broke into hysterical laughters. And it took him a while to recover before assuring me he will remember it forever.

Anwar finally ousted Mahathir and his long ruling UMNO party last week to become the new Malaysian Prime Minister, a long wait of over two decades.

My heartiest congratulations, it’s long overdue. You ARE the Boss now.

business leaders Business risks Corporate espionage Cyber Espionage Donald Trump Espionage Fake news Geopolitics Intelligence Politics Privacy Putin QAnon Russia Security Self deniers Social Media Sock puppets Spies Surveillance Yevgeny Prigozhin

Shhh… The US Midterm Election – Self Deniers, Fake News and The Sock Puppets

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Whatever the outcome of the 2022 US midterm election, along with the seismic shift in the American society and global geopolitical landscape that could follow, this short clip highlighting a brief interview nicely sums up the state of the world today: a human catastrophe of self deniers, fake news and social media manipulation which is sadly not unique to just Trump & the US today but immanent and imminent globally like a pandemic.

Fans of the American espionage triller Homeland would recall how the television series rightly predicted (before the Trump administration) the power of fake news and social media engineering in season 6 when the computer geek Max Piotrowski (bottom right in the picture above) went undercover to find a homegrown conspiracy in a shadowy private company spearheaded the practice of sock puppets to plot against the President (below).

Any guess where some of these (sock puppets) boiler rooms could be?

Sock Puppets in Season 6 of HOMELAND