SYRIA SOLIDARITY—A continuing US military presence in Syria allows the USA to pressure the Syrian government regarding the terms of the inevitable political settlement of the Syrian conflict. From its vantage point in NE Syria, the USA could continue militarily to threaten Damascus – not TO mention other nearby states such as Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran – and to make life miserable for Syrians, such as by supporting roving bands of ISIS terrorists or ISIS missile attacks on Syrian communities.
December 27, 2017
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Paul Jay: Empires Don’t Make Their Own Reality
7 minutes readDecember 27, 2017 PAUL JAY: Hi everybody, I’m Paul Jay at the Real News…
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Big Media on Last Thursday’s Vote in Catalonia: “Never Mind”
22 minutes readTHOMAS HARRINGTON—One would think that, if nothing else, the US and European press would be captivated by the David vs. Goliath nature of the victory. But, of course, paying attention to a victory of this type would mean calling attention to just how far off the mark all of that “common knowledge” they had spread about a minority recklessly inflicting its will on a majority had truly been.
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Downsizing: Alexander Payne’s take on climate change, overpopulation, social inequality … and more
12 minutes readJOANNE LAURIER—Alexander Payne’s new film Downsizing, is an uneven, but engaging science-fiction satire that proposes to solve the earth’s ecological and other problems by “downsizing,” or physically shrinking, human beings. The creator of such noteworthy films as Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002) and Nebraska (2013), Payne employs, in Downsizing, a generally light touch in attempting to address pressing social ills.
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The contradictions of the bitcoin-blockchain frenzy
14 minutes readNICK BEAMS—”Last Thursday, for example, shares in the Nasdaq-listed Long Island Tea Corp., a company that has never reported a profit, rose by as much as 500 percent on news that it was changing its name to Long Blockchain Corp. The company said it was ‘shifting its primary corporate focus towards the exploration of an investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology.'”