Journalist Alia Malek on What We're Missing When We Talk About About Syria

Politically Re-Active with W. Kamau Bell & Hari Kondabolu

WarnerMedia Podcast Network

News

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2017

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s been six years of the devastating civil war in Syria – more than 11 million people have been displaced, and last week’s horrifying chemical attack on Syrian citizens by their own president Bashar al-Assad has been yet another reminder of the human cost of the conflict. On this episode of Politically Re-Active, journalist and author Alia Malek helps contextualize the war and shares her own experiences of living in Damascus during the start of the conflict. Alia recommends following these outlets and journalists to stay engaged with news from Syria: independent journalist Rania Abouzeid (@Raniaab), Kareem Shaheen of The Guardian (@kshaheen), and the website http://syria.jadaliyya.com/. And if you have money to spare, donate to the following organizations: INARA, which focuses on providing medical assistance to children from Syria, and Chicago-based Karam, which seeks to “restore the dignity and quality of life for people affected by conflict.”

Learn more about Alia and her book, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria, at www.aliamalek.com/.

Find tour dates and albums from your favorite hosts at www.harikondabolu.com and www.wkamaubell.com.

As always, send us your thoughts and suggestions on Twitter and over email: @politicreactive or [email protected].

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What are you on? Are you still on that slot? What is it? It's called slack. So what slack is?
0:04.4	It's like a group chat. So I'm asking the producers and come out and they're like, and I would say like...
0:11.6	They're telling you what to ask me? Yeah, I'm like, okay, after this, should we go into what narrative she wished she heard in the media?
0:17.6	Okay, got it. It goes, can you... Yeah, I said they bring us more gummy worms.
0:21.8	Can we get more gummy worms, please?
0:24.8	From Topic and Airwolf, this is politically reactive. I'm W. Kamalbo.
0:30.0	And I'm Harry Kunderbolu, the most famous Harry in America.
0:34.4	Suck it, Harry, St. Avastin, and Harry Kundtru. Am I right, Kamal?
0:39.2	Yeah, suck it, Harry's, I don't know.
0:41.4	Ha ha!
0:42.8	The show where two comedians try to make sense of politics in America.
0:46.3	Before America ends. And you know what goes well with the end of Empire Kamal?
0:52.4	Pepsi!
0:53.5	We are the right!
0:55.5	God, I would love to appropriate myself a big ol' steaming can of Pepsi right now.
1:03.9	And to think, there was one point last week where we thought Kendall Jenner and Pepsi using all the good feeling of the civil rights movement to sell brown sugar water
1:11.8	was the worst thing that could happen.
1:13.9	Yeah, and also, who's Kendall Jenner?
1:17.0	Oh, don't worry, Harry. We'll never need to know the answer to that question.
1:20.8	On today's show, we're not going to be talking about Kendall Jenner, something we know very little about.
1:27.0	But we're talking about the conflict in Syria, which is actually also something we know very little about.
1:32.0	Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria.
	...

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