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But Maria’s courage and refusal to bow to intimidation earned her international recognition: in 2021, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first Filipino to receive it. Now she’s a globally recognised figure battling to save journalism and democracy from Big Tech and AI.

Maria tells Sangita Myska that we are now living in an “information Armageddon”.

“The technology that rules our world literally doesn’t care about facts,” she says. “In fact, lies spread faster than facts – and if you lace it with fear, anger and hate, it goes viral.”

In this fascinating and in-depth ‘Sangita Meets…’ interview, Maria explains how tech and state power are increasingly merging to become what she calls “the authoritarian stack”, how Big Tech is cloning us for profit and how algorithms are designed to radicalise and polarise us.

“We are living and standing on the rubble of the world that was. If we don’t act like that and put the laws in place that will protect citizens from manipulation, we lose it all,” Maria explains.

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Ressa also speaks about:

• What it means to be frenemies with Mark Zuckerberg

• How Facebook’s friends-of-friends algorithm “destroyed democracy”

• Why we should be worried about Palantir and the UK’s NHS data

• How we can reclaim our power and defend ourselves before it’s too late

Free subscribers get a 5-minute preview of the video above while Zeteo UK’s paid subscribers can watch it in full.

You can also find episodes of ‘Sangita Meets…’ wherever you get your podcasts.

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It’s been a long time coming, but Mehdi was finally joined by the acclaimed Palestinian American comedian Mo Amer for a very special LIVE taping of ‘We’re Not Kidding’ in Mo’s hometown of Houston.

In this wide-ranging, hilarious, and, at times, emotional conversation, the two talk about Mo’s groundbreaking Netflix TV series ‘Mo’, his roots in the Houston comedy scene, and how the past three years of genocide in Gaza have impacted him and his community.

“How hard has the last three years been for you, as a Palestinian public figure?” Mehdi asks.

“I didn’t even think about it as a public figure. This has been my life the whole time,” Mo says. “The last three years have been heightened by 10,000%.”

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Mo talks about his family’s background in Palestine and growing up in the melting pot of Houston – the primary inspirations for his Peabody Award-winning series ‘Mo’. Mehdi asks about the series’ truly exceptional second season, which explored US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centres, Israeli cultural appropriation and even depicts life for persecuted Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

“You see Israeli soldiers just brutalising Palestinians. And I wonder, how did you get that past Netflix?” Mehdi asks. “This is my own personal experience. This is what I told them,” Mo says. “And this is the nicest version I could possibly make.”

Mo also gives Mehdi his unfiltered opinion about another famous Palestinian who has stayed silent on the genocide: DJ Khaled. “It just feels off and so disconnected. It feels like you’re just playing a version of yourself,” Mo says. “I can’t imagine myself constantly being this character. It’s just weird.”

The two also talk about:

• Mo’s first American Halloween as a bewildered immigrant child

• How Mo got into comedy

• Being the first Arab American to sell out Radio City Music Hall

• Whether Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico will turn Texas blue

• And they play a Texas-themed version of ‘This or That’

They also take questions from the audience of 1,500 people in Houston about comedy as resistance, the best ways to support the Palestinian diaspora, and Muslim representation on the stand-up stage.

Free subscribers get a 5-minute preview of the video above while Zeteo’s paid subscribers can watch it in full. You can find previous episodes of ‘We’re Not Kidding’ wherever you get your podcasts.

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Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza are paying the price for an election they can’t vote in.

While Israel’s political future dominates headlines, its “full lockdown” of the occupied West Bank and ongoing bombings in Gaza received far less attention. Whatever the outcome of Israel’s election, the result will be the same: more of the occupation, dispossession, and killing that Palestinians saw this week.

Israel killed at least 15 Palestinians, including a 6-year-old girl shot in the neck, in separate incidents across Gaza this week, while simultaneously terrorizing Palestinians, journalists, and activists across the occupied West Bank.

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In Hebron – a total closure of which was ordered after Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers – occupation forces forcibly displaced thousands of Palestinians, demolishing homes after giving some families just minutes to collect their belongings.

There, Israeli police also arrested U.S. journalist Jasper Nathaniel and activist Andrey Kharzhanovsky after illegal Israeli settlers attacked them – yes, you read that right.

While Israelis flocked to voting booths to decide who leads the oppression and occupation of Palestinians next, here is what Palestinians who don’t get a vote had to endure this week:

Saturday, Oct. 24 – Hundreds of Families Displaced in Hebron Amid Israeli Lockdown

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Malm has been told that his “presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good”. He last visited the UK in May this year.

In an interview with Zeteo UK’s political editor, Shehab Khan, Malm said: “This is just a small station on the journey towards authoritarian politics, where you make these … attacks on people’s right to express themselves.”

Malm was due to speak about the current situation in the Middle East and says he has never publicly displayed support for Palestine Action, which has been proscribed as a terror group by the government.

He has made controversial statements in the past, having described the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel – in which about 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage – as “an act of liberation”. He was, however, given a visa to travel to the UK after making those comments.

Malm joins U.S. commentators Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, who were also barred from the UK earlier this year.

“It’s an obvious pattern, and it’s a crackdown on any kind of … dissent in relation to the genocide in Palestine,” Malm said.

Paid subscribers can watch the interview above in full, without a paywall. Free subscribers can watch a two-minute preview.

Consider becoming a paid subscriber to Zeteo UK today to unlock more of Shehab’s interviews as well as the rest of Zeteo UK’s content – and support independent journalism in the UK!

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I’m not sure I’ve ever shared this publicly, but I’m a bit of a Trekkie, so Patrick Stewart’s death at the age of 86 on Wednesday hit me pretty hard.

Growing up, I loved watching ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ which aired in the late 1980s and early 1990s and starred Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, the second-most famous, but undeniably the best, captain of the USS Enterprise.

Watching Stewart, a Shakespearean stage actor with a “commanding baritone voice,” deliver rousing monologues as Picard gave me chills. The clip below, from the 1996 movie ‘Star Trek: First Contact,’ is one of my favourite scenes involving Stewart.

Stewart passed away of Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia just 51 days before the U.S. release of ‘Avengers: Doomsday,’ in which the award-winning British actor reprised his other famous Hollywood sci-fi role as Professor Charles Xavier, leader of the X-Men. Stewart played Xavier, aka Professor X, in six ‘X-Men’ movies between 2000 and 2014.

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I admired him not just for his acting, but for his politics too: He was a loud critic of Donald Trump, an opponent of Brexit, a lifelong socialist and a campaigner against domestic violence.

In 2003, in an interview with The Independent, Stewart said some of his fellow British actors thought he was “slumming it” for agreeing to play characters in Hollywood sci-fi shows and movies.

“What crap! What snobbery!” he said. “For huge numbers of people, I will always be Jean-Luc Picard, and that’s fine.”

Indeed. Rest in power, Jean-Luc, rest in power.

And now, let’s hear from the man himself.

On Violence Against Women

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Abdul El-Sayed is not the only American progressive capable of reframing the debate for a mass audience. Earlier this month Zohran Mamdani appeared on Theo Von’s podcast – a show with millions of listeners and whose host endorsed Trump – and explained socialism in such a clear, grounded and persuasive way that he brought Theo Von and, most crucially, his audience along with him.

And while stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani have drawn international attention, next week’s U.S. midterms have put a spotlight on new raw political talent.

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Blink and you’d miss it, but the European fish industry is now feeding poultry waste to farmed salmon. This can legally include the necks, feet, heads and skin of birds, their intestines and unemptied upper digestive tracts, internal organs such as liver, kidney and spleen, hatchery waste such as day-old chicks and eggs, and parts of carcasses with abnormalities and lesions. Chicken feathers are permitted in fish feed by EU and UK law too, but are regarded as a step too far by European producers.

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It’s called the “circular economy” – and is billed as a step towards greater sustainability in food production. Producers point out that these poultry byproducts must come from birds passed as fit for human consumption, even if cultural taboos mean they are rejected at the slaughterhouse. Nonetheless, producers in Norway and retailers in the UK kept quiet about the new practice, fearing a backlash over the “yuk” factor, until the Financial Times broke their cover earlier this month. The truth is, climate breakdown and shocks in global supply chains have forced them to consider novel sources of food for their salmon farms.

A cautionary tale

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Former Conservative Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has warned the Tories against working with Nigel Farage and Reform in the event of a hung parliament - insisting they are miles apart on several major issues.

In an interview for ‘The Real Question with Shehab Khan’, Keegan raised concerns about Reform’s stance on Russia, the question marks over Nigel Farage’s Crypto-backed donations and the debate over ‘Englishness’ started by her former Cabinet colleague Suella Braverman.

On Russia she said: “The one person you never hear about on this topic is Nigel Farage.”

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Asked what happens if only a Tory-Reform arrangement can form a government after the next election, she said it would have to be a minority administration, and that coalitions are a “nightmare” the country should want to avoid.

Here are some other topics Shehab pressed Keegan on in the wide-ranging interview:

• Brexit, the pandemic and political instability

• The demise of Boris Johnson’s 2019 majority

• Her criticism of Andy Burnham’s social care proposals

• The concrete crisis that gripped schools when she was Education Secretary.

Paid subscribers can watch the interview above in full, without a paywall. Free subscribers can watch a four-minute preview.

Consider becoming a paid subscriber to Zeteo UK today to unlock more of Shehab’s interviews as well as the rest of Zeteo UK’s content – and support independent journalism in the UK!

ICYMI: More episodes of ‘The Real Question with Shehab Khan’

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Israel has really done it this time. The results of its general election finally settle the argument. Those in the West who have insisted that Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies are not representative of Israeli society are completely discredited. The baseless illusion that some sort of change will happen from within Israel is dead and buried.

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You could see the Western media desperately willing the opposition on, hoping it would allow Israel to reboot its reputation and reverse the growing hostility it attracts in Europe and the U.S. Take one BBC report, which argued that Netanyahu was up against “centrist” and “leftist” figures, describing the opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot as “softly spoken” and “low-key”. All of it was based on fantasy.

Now the result is in, you can hear the counter-argument assemble itself. Did Netanyahu’s bloc not lose 10 seats? Do parties opposed to the prime minister, when combined, not have a 12-seat majority? What possible route to power does Netanyahu have with 54 seats, given that 61 are required to form a majority?

All superficially true – but it ignores the political reality.

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There is a reason the chancellor is the only politician permitted a drink at the despatch box on budget day. Gladstone steadied himself with sherry and a beaten egg, Disraeli with brandy and water. Then, in 1997, Gordon Brown reached for water, and the custom quietly died. John Healey delivered his first budget today with nothing stronger than the cheers of his own backbenchers to keep him going.

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Although the fine print says this was Healey’s budget, it was in fact written by the actions taking place 3,000 miles away. The chancellor spoke of the “global economic storms” facing the country, referring to the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran. The Office for Budget Responsibility now has growth at 1.2% this year and 1% in 2027, down from the 1.6% it previously expected. Fiscal headroom has also fallen from £23 billion to £15 billion, and every decision announced today was made in the shadow of that missing £8 billion.

It may yet get worse – forecasts are out of date the moment they are printed, and The Wall Street Journal reports that attacks could intensify once the U.S. midterms are out of the way. Healey said the government “did not want” this war, but Britain has lent its bases so it is involved – and now the bill is landing in bank accounts up and down the country. That is the uncomfortable truth at the heart of today’s budget – a conflict fought in the Gulf is being paid for by all of us.

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Few expected election night in Serbia to end peacefully on Sunday. Yet the country’s longtime leader Aleksandar Vučić, after 14 years at the helm, took to the airwaves to concede defeat shortly after polls closed. In a rambling speech, he told the nation that up to 140 of the 250 members of the new parliament would come from the Student List, the electoral vehicle established by the student movement that had led two years of mass protests against his rule. With that announcement, it was over, and scenes of joy and festivities spread across Serbia late into the night.

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As in The Lord of the Rings, when Sauron’s fall sent his armies scattering and his dominion crumbling, Vučić’s vast apparatus of control and repression seemed to dissolve literally overnight. Footage captured by Al Jazeera showed protesters jeering and throwing objects at a police convoy as it withdrew from central Belgrade. It was a striking reversal of roles, after the heavy policing that met anti-government protests over the past two years.

Over the following 24 hours, hated symbols of the regime were hastily dismantled by emboldened crowds. Citizens stormed the premises of the pro-regime Informer TV, confronting Dragan Vučićević, its widely despised editor. Protesters tore down tents in so-called Ćacilend, an encampment of lumpen extras, likened by some to a pro-regime garrison, guarding the Serbian presidency building.

But the sense of reckoning did not end there. Social media across the country recorded footage of the removal of portraits of Vučić from the offices of state-appointed directors in the public sector. People have begun to reverse the atmosphere of fear and intimidation that they endured for years in their workplaces as well as on the streets.

The movement, sparked by the deaths of 16 people in the collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy in November 2024, has travelled an extraordinary distance in less than two years, turning a demand for accountability over a disaster associated with corruption and negligence into a successful challenge to one of Europe’s most entrenched political regimes. As student-led movements have spread across Europe, from Albania and Italy to France and Belgium, the movement in Serbia has been held up as a blueprint for victory.

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Diplomat Lana Nusseibeh has entered the race to succeed António Guterres as the United Nations’ 10th secretary-general. If she succeeds, she will be the first woman, the first Muslim and the first person of Palestinian descent to be appointed UN secretary-general.

She sounds great, right?

Wrong.

Nusseibeh was, until earlier this month, minister of state in the Emirati foreign ministry, and spent much of the past decade as the United Arab Emirates’ permanent representative to the United Nations. In both positions, she has whitewashed the UAE’s involvement in the genocide in Sudan.

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If the UN Security Council confirms Nusseibeh as the next secretary-general – and her chances are pretty high, given that all of the other candidates are believed to be opposed by the Trump administration – it will be making a monumental error of judgement, which could destroy the already weakened credibility of the UN for generations to come.

First, some background on what has been repeatedly described as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.

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But now he’s making headlines after being arrested for holding up a placard in support of Palestine Action. “To be completely honest, I wasn’t expecting this time of my life … to be facing terrorism charges,” he tells Sangita Myska. “The terrorists here are the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza.”

In this episode of “Sangita Meets…”, the pair also take a deep dive into the most pressing issues of the climate crisis: they discuss how the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry are corrupting our politicians, how the U.S. has let China lead the world in renewables and why we need to radically reform capitalism if we want to save the planet.

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Free subscribers get a four-minute preview of the video above, while Zeteo UK’s paid subscribers can watch it in full. You can also find episodes of ‘Sangita Meets…’ wherever you get your podcasts. Upgrade to paid today – and support independent journalism.

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As John Healey prepares his first budget as chancellor, consumer confidence has plunged to its lowest levels since the UK voted to leave the European Union. The GfK confidence tracker fell to minus 24 points this month, 11 points lower than in September, suggesting that consumers are feeling very pessimistic indeed about their personal financial situation and the overall state of the economy. One of the directors of the survey commented that the fall was “alarming” and was being driven by “relentless cost-of-living pressures”.

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When Andy Burnham first became prime minister, promising to end neoliberalism and protect people from the cost-of-living crisis, consumer confidence briefly increased. But it began to ebb away again once people realised how limited his ambitions truly were. One of his first cost-of-living interventions was a ban on subscription traps, saving the average consumer £170 per year – a measly amount when you consider that the average household is £2,400 worse off purely as a result of the Iran war.

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For a short period in the spring, Molly Furnival-Doran was a poster girl for palatable Palestine fundraising. Her story – of growing up in a sleepy Welsh village, finding herself with a Palestinian adoptive brother scooped off the streets by her mum, then deciding to retrace his 3,000-mile odyssey by bike to raise money for Gaza – was enough to inspire even the most cynical observers. Speaking to Zeteo UK, Furnival-Doran joked about her wholesome appeal: “My mum says that from day dot, I’ve been Miss United Nations.”

In her hot-pink cycling casquette and oversized aviators, the 33-year-old’s enthusiasm for life had soon infected ITV News, the Daily Mirror, BBC Wales, WalesOnline and several local papers. It had also attracted the attention of her chosen fundraising platform, GoFundMe.

In January, GoFundMe’s press team approached Furnival-Doran, saying it had been “moved” by her campaign, and asking if it could put her in touch with journalists.

The same day, Furnival-Doran received an email from GoFundMe saying the payouts from her fundraiser – which, at the time of writing, totalled £34,990 ($45,879) – had been paused.

Blocking Funds to Gaza?

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I am sitting in a cafe in Jerusalem’s Old City with a Palestinian friend. His phone rings. It’s a message from Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), the political party of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

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A voice says “Barra Barra”, which translates as “Get out. Get out.”

Ben-Gvir is appealing to Israeli voters by calling for the disqualification of Arab politicians from standing in the Israeli elections. His entire campaign is about the dispossession and erasure of Palestinians. Naked racism, and it’s working.

One of his campaign videos celebrates the demolition of an apartment block in East Jerusalem, making 70 people homeless.

“This is what governance looks like in Jerusalem,” declares Ben-Gvir on the video. “During my tenure, we demolish and demolish and demolish again.”

He adds: “We are the masters of the house here. There is a very, very clear message here: Jerusalem is ours, the State of Israel is ours.”

This is the most racist election in Israel’s history, the nastiest and most vindictive.

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Andy Burnham gets it. In his conference speech last month, the prime minister committed to “the biggest council housebuilding programme since the war”. Through Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy policy, some 2 million council houses have been sold. Meanwhile, social housebuilding in England is at its lowest rate in decades.

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The private sector won’t solve the UK’s housing crisis. It never has.

It was only when the government fully took responsibility for the quality of housing as well as the quantity that slums were cleared and new housing built. The figures are stark, with government statistics showing the vital contribution council housing made through the decades.

This Labour government has set itself the target of building 300,000 homes a year – a number that has been reached only for a few years in the 1960s, when council house building was at its peak. A new programme of council house building is the only way Andy Burnham can deliver on his promise. But how?

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Collective punishment.

It’s been Israeli policy for decades.

In the occupied West Bank, we’re witnessing collective punishment in its purest form after the Israeli military said suspected Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers and injured three others near a checkpoint in Hebron on Friday. The suspected assailants were killed in the attack, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a “full lockdown” of the occupied West Bank, with Israeli forces conducting raids, forcibly displacing Palestinian families, and demolishing homes and structures of those who had nothing to do with the shooting.

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Collective punishment is also what we’ve witnessed in Gaza for decades, especially over the last three years. Nearly every day this week, for example, Israel killed a child – sometimes more than one – in Gaza. Some of their names were:

Misk Hazem al-Dalou, 7
Abdul Rahman Khalil Awad, 10
Walid Mohammed Shakshak, 13
Yusuf Salim Abu Ghali, 14
Majd Mohammed Fakhri Hassan, 15

They are among the more than 350 children who have been killed since the so-called “ceasefire” a year ago.

As Israel inflicts collective punishment on Palestinians, the world largely remains silent. Here’s more on what Palestinians were forced to endure during another deadly and troubling week in Palestine:

Saturday, Oct. 17 – Masked Israeli Settlers Attack European Diplomats

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Trying to find the difference between leading politicians in Israel is like sorting M&M’s: they look different on the outside, but they’re all the same on the inside. The top contenders to replace Benjamin Netanyahu, in fact, offer very little to hope for, especially on Palestinian statehood and an end to the occupation, and some even position themselves further right than the current prime minister, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.

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We at Zeteo keep tabs, save receipts, and remember the moments those in power show their true colors. So without further ado, here is a list of the top Israeli politicians trying to replace Netanyahu next week with a different version of the same racist, ethnocentric and bigoted style of governance:

Gadi Eisenkot – Yashar (Straight)

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In an interview on ‘The Real Question with Shehab Khan’, Tapp, who is now a backbench Labour MP, said he does not know any Palestinians but reported the motion as he believed it could “potentially” be antisemitic.

“What I don’t want to be doing is going around drawing conclusions in something so complex. That’s why it needs a thorough investigation to look at the behaviour around it and to look at some of the language,” he said.

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Tapp caused a stir when the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, accused him of breaking the ministerial code while a junior minister in her department after he wrote an unauthorised article about Home Office policy.

He has recently filmed a documentary about small-boat crossings, which he says he did because he wanted to “show people that we don’t have to be divisive when we’re talking about immigration”.

Here are some other topics Shehab pressed Tapp on in the wide-ranging interview:

• What Zionism means to him specifically

• Whether the Palestine Action ban is fair and legitimate

• Accusations that he broke the ministerial code

• Small boat crossings and illegal migration.

Paid subscribers can watch the interview above in full, without a paywall. Free subscribers can watch a four-minute preview.

Consider becoming a paid subscriber to Zeteo UK today to unlock more of Shehab’s interviews as well as the rest of Zeteo UK’s content – and support independent journalism in the UK!

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ICYMI: More episodes of ‘The Real Question with Shehab Khan’

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