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Tag: Huffington Post

My Racist Encounter at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

Published by Shahidul Alam on May 12, 2013

by?Seema Jilani?Huffington Post

The faux red carpet had been laid out for the famous and the wannabe-famous. Politicians and journalists arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, bedazzled in the hopes of basking in a few fleeting moments of fame, even if only by osmosis from proximity to celebrities. New to the Washington scene, I was to experience the spectacle with my husband, a journalist, and enjoy an evening out. Or at least an hour out. You see, as a spouse I was not allowed into the actual dinner. Those of us who are not participating in the hideous schmooze-fest that is this evening are relegated to attending the cocktail hour only, if that. Our guest was the extraordinarily brilliant Oscar-nominated director of?Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin. Mr. Zeitlin’s unassuming demeanor was a refreshing taste of humility in a sea of pretentious politicians reeking of narcissism.

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AMNESTY USA ON SYRIAN GOVERNMENT'S WAR CRIMES: The whole truth?

Published by Shahidul Alam on June 18, 2012

by rahnuma ahmed

I’d thought of writing about Monsanto this week — the US-based biotech giant which is being sued by five million Brazilian farmers for 7.7 billion dollars for its seed-patenting, rightly dubbed “GM genocide” — but the press statement from Amnesty International USA, which had slipped into my inbox caught my eye.
Headlined, “Urgent: From Syria’s Frontlines“, it spoke of an Amnesty report to be released this week which has uncovered “widespread new evidence of heinous war crimes committed by the Syrian government armed forces and militias.” Amnesty’s ?investigations of the Houla and Dara massacres, claims the release, provides “unequivocal evidence that the Syrian army is responsible for gross violations of human rights on a massive scale.”
Only Bashar al-Assad’s armed forces and militias? Only the Syrian army? No mention of atrocities committed by the rebel forces? Of the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s admission that al-Qaeda is supporting the armed insurrection in Syria? Which, as Paul Joseph Watson points out, is consistent with reports that these same terrorists had helped to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi in Libya and had been airlifted to Syria by NATO forces? That al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has publicly lent support to Syrian rebel forces? (“Clinton: Al Qaeda, U.S., Helping Syrian Rebels,” Global Research, March 2, 2012).

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Marines Urinating on Dead Taliban: How Low Will We Go?

Published by Shahidul Alam on January 14, 2012

By Ethan Casey

Huffington Post Posted: 1/13/12 11:45 AM ET
I haven’t fully digested the disgusting news that U.S. Marines have been caught on video urinating on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, so this post is not offered as a coherent think-piece. But what is there to think about, anyway? What is there to say, really, except that there’s absolutely no excuse? No excuse for the policy makers and officers, but neither is there one for the brutalized young perpetrators. Their lowly enlisted status doesn’t excuse them; we should offer them compassion, but not absolution, for the guilt they carry. The next time I’m in a U.S. airport and the passengers break out in applause when the gate agent or flight attendant congratulates “our men and women in uniform,” I’ll remember this incident.

In keeping with its maddening, self-regarding role as the American Pravda, a hand-wringing New York Times “analysis” worries that “the images could incite anti-American sentiment at a particularly delicate moment in the decade-old Afghan war.” Well, how could they not have that effect? And why shouldn’t they?

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