Roqayah Chamseddine

Roqayah Chamseddine is a Lebanese-American writer, published poet, and journalist, whose work can be found at Roqchams.com.

Whitewashing Bush and Obama’s Anti-Muslim Policies to Attack Trump

In every instance that Trump target Muslims, the reanimated corpse of the Bush presidency is forced into the public arena again, and a parade of commentators tell a story that is pure fiction about an administration that only exists in their heads.

Roqayah Chamseddine
By Roqayah Chamseddine
President Bush speaks to the press during his visit to the Mosque at the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., on, September 17, 2001.

Opinion -- President Donald Trump’s fervent Islamophobia, which will likely surge again now that the Supreme Court has blessed the travel ban, is viewed as a kind of unique hostility towards Muslims. Jennifer Williams, Vox’s deputy foreign and national security editor, and a Muslim herself, published a widely shared piece which argued, in part,

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#HURESIST Is Anti-Racist Student Activism That Goes Beyond Trump

What #HUResist represents is genuine resistance against not just the symptom that is Donald Trump, but the disease of white supremacy.

Roqayah Chamseddine
By Roqayah Chamseddine
Student organizers attempt to deliver demands to Pres. Frederick, campus police called. (Photo: Twitter/#HUResist)

In the wave of movements and trends of the Trump era, #HUResist is a powerful and often overlooked student-led initiative at Howard University that goes beyond anti-Trump organizing. The student movement for administrative transparency started not long after President Donald Trump was elected. Students became aware of the cozy relationship

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Paul Ryan’s ‘Cindy’ Is a Cruel Figment of Capitalist Imagination

The Republican Speaker, who has an estimated net worth of $6,453,040, wants people to believe that what amounts to an extra $58 a month will allow for “Cindy” to save money.

Roqayah Chamseddine
By Roqayah Chamseddine
In this May 4, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump talks to House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, after the House pushed through a health care bill. (AP/Evan Vucci)

Paul Ryan used Twitter to introduce “Cindy,” a fictional mother of one who works as an assistant restaurant manager making $30,000 a year. https://twitter.com/SpeakerRyan/status/931600555927105536 “Meet Cindy: a single mom, making $30,000 per year, who hopes to one day get beyond living paycheck to paycheck,” Ryan wrote. “With a $700 increase

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Imperialism, Intervention, “War On Terror” Detonate In Mogadishu

The recent devastating car bombing in Mogadishu has been blamed by Somali officials on the terrorist group al-Shabab. But the violence (and famine) that have beset Somalia have deeper roots — decades of imperialism and intervention, and use of Somalia as a staging grounds for the “war on terror.”

Roqayah Chamseddine
By Roqayah Chamseddine
Somalis remove the body of a man killed in Saturday's blast, in Mogadishu, Somalia Sunday, Oct. 15, 2017. The death toll from the huge truck bomb blast in Somalia's capital rose to over 50 Sunday, with more than 60 others injured, as hospitals struggled to cope with the high number of casualties, security and medical sources said. (AP/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA -- In the Somali capital of Mogadishu, nearly 400 were killed, hundreds more were injured, and dozens are still missing after a car bomb was detonated at a busy intersection. According to a Somali official, the original target was a newly erected Turkish military base, the largest of its kind, and the Somali National Intelligence

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Obamacare Failures Push Patients To Rely On Urgent Care Centers

Urgent care facilities, though they have their benefits, do not rectify the failings of the government to take care of people. In the words of Pete Volk, it is “single-payer or bust.”

Roqayah Chamseddine
By Roqayah Chamseddine
doctors office

In the United States, where health care costs are bankrupting Americans more than any other type of debt, urgent care centers (UCC) are on the rise, and more Americans are leaving their primary care physicians behind in favor of them. At John Peter Smith Hospital (JPS) in Fort Worth, Texas, there’s a program for low-income residents called JPS

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A Culture Of Violence: A Parade of Stephen Paddocks With A Huge Pile Of Guns

Buried among statistics on gun profits and lobbying efforts is the terrifying reality of just how unique America’s gun obsession and associated violence are. And the equally terrifying plan by the NRA to “normalize” gun possession in nearly every nook and cranny of American life.

Roqayah Chamseddine
By Roqayah Chamseddine
In this photo taken March 15, 2017, an AR-15 style rifle manufactured by Battle Rifle Co. is display in Webster, Texas. (AP/Lisa Marie Pane)

In the aftermath of the horrific attack in Las Vegas, during which 64-year-old Stephen Paddock rained bullets on concert-goers from inside his hotel room, the gun violence epidemic in the U.S. has come back into focus. Paddock, who left behind an arsenal of 47 guns and multiple loaded high-capacity magazines, managed to kill 58 people and injure

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Media On North Korea: Easier To Demonize Than Try To Understand

U.S. campaigns for regime change characteristically focus on the “madness” of the “dictators” to be toppled. In the case of North Korea, the narrative is spiced by the country’s developing nuclear capabilities — which North Korea views as its main line of defense against . . . regime change.

Roqayah Chamseddine
By Roqayah Chamseddine
People watch a TV screen showing an image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivering a statement in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's speech to the United Nations, in Pyongyang, North Korea, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 22, 2017. (AP/Ahn Young-joon)

The media's demonization of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, especially in the realm of American news, continues a pattern seen in years past. From Iraq to Venezuela, the corporate media's depiction of inhabitants of foreign territories is meant to remove their autonomy and humanity, and this is exactly what's happened in the case of

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