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Focus: Russia and Syria – Aug 21, 2017

Russia boosts air campaign to help recapture key Syrian city Deir el-Zour – ABC News

During the past five days Russian planes made 316 sorties and carried out 819 strikes, ISIS terrorists pulling strongest units to Deir ez-Zor for last stand: Russian MoD – RT News

Central Syria almost liberated from terrorists, while Aleppo Province is already free from them: Russian General Staff – Sputnik International

Syria war: Russian jets ‘destroy IS convoy near Deir al-Zour’, Russia’s defence ministry said at least 200 jihadists died – BBC News

VIDEO (English subtitles and transcript): Syria briefing by Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Colonel General Sergei Rudskoy – Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation

VIDEO: Russian air force destroys 200+ ISIS terrorists heading for Deir ez-Zor, Syria: Russia’s MoD – YouTube

Syrian Army secures strategic town Hamimah near Deir Ezzor from ISIS (VIDEO) – almasdarnews.com

Rebel spies exterminate ISIS gathering in Deir Ezzor, 8 jihadists killed – almasdarnews.com

ISIS’s Baghdadi is believed to have moved to eastern Deir Ezzor: source – almasdarnews.com

Syrian Army takes ISIS-held town Huwaysis near strategic gas field in central Syria – almasdarnews.com

Syrian read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Ed Kinane on Stopping Killer Drones

Ed Kinane is based in Syracuse, New York, and has been a big part of efforts to oppose drone piloting at Hancock Air Base for the past 10 years. His amazing array of work over the past decades has included teaching math and biology in a one-room Quaker school in rural Kenya, hitchiking Africa and North America, providing protective accompaniment to targeted activists in Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, and Sri Lanka, serving as chair of Peace Brigades International’s Sri Lanka read more

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Tomgram: Engelhardt, Welcome to the Post-American World

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Pardon Me!
High Crimes and Demeanors in the Age of Trump
By Tom Engelhardt

Let me try to get this straight: from the moment the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 until recently just about every politician and mainstream pundit in America assured us that we were the planet’s indispensable nation, the only truly exceptional one on this small orb of ours.

We were the sole superpower, read more

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Creative Anti-Nazism

The people of Durham , N.C., have the right idea. Not only have they taken down a Confederate war statue themselves, but they’ve lined up en masse to turn themselves in for that crime, overwhelming the so-called justice system.

The people of Wunsiedel, German, have the right idea. They’ve responded to Nazi marches by funding anti-Nazi groups for every Nazi marcher, and cheering on and thanking the marchers.

The people of Richardson, Texas, have the right idea. Members of a mosque intervened read more

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Focus: North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – Aug 16, 2017

U.S. takes tough lines as NAFTA negotiations begin: ‘We feel that NAFTA has fundamentally failed many, many Americans and needs major improvement’ – Yahoo News

VIDEO: NAFTA 2.0 press conference with US, Canada and Mexico representatives – United States Trade Representative

TRANSCRIPT: Opening statement of USTR Robert Lighthizer at the first round of NAFTA renegotiations – United States Trade Representative

Full text of the Trump administration’s Summary of Objectives for NAFTA Renegotiation – ustr.gov

Canada and Mexico rebuke Trump at tense start of NAFTA talks – FT.com

What the U.S., Canada and Mexico want from a new NAFTA – US News

Address by Canada Foreign Affairs Minister Freeland on the modernization of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – Canada.ca

U.S. trade vets say Canada’s NAFTA demands a ‘long shot’ – torontosun.com

Prioridades de México en las negociaciones para la modernización del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte – Secretaría de Economía | Gobierno

The A team across the table: The top US, Canada and Mexico negotiators – Bloomberg

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Will Koreans Count This Time?

William S. Geimer

Author: Canada: The Case for Staying Out of Other People’s Wars

Blog: DearVirtualEditor.com

A number of important matters are being ignored in the latest furor of North Korea. One is the fact that the U.S. created North Korea and South Korea, and then rejected the only democratic option for unification. The U.S. made these moves with little or no regard for the wishes of the Korean people, and at the cost of millions of their lives. To date, it has been clear that Korea is no read more

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How War Pollutes the Potomac River

By David Swanson and Pat Elder, World Beyond War

The Pentagon’s impact on the river on whose bank it sits is not simply the diffuse impact of global warming and rising oceans contributed to by the U.S. military’s massive oil consumption. The U.S. military also directly poisons the Potomac River in more ways than almost anyone would imagine.

Let’s take a cruise down the Potomac from its source in the mountains of West Virginia to its mouth at the Chesapeake Bay. The journey down this mighty read more

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Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Is Anything the Moral Equivalent of War?

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Ever since 2001, when President George W. Bush launched an endless “global war” not on al-Qaeda but on a phenomenon, or perhaps simply a feeling (“terror”) and those who could potentially induce it, America’s all-too-real conflicts have become, as TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon writes today, ever more read more

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Talk Nation Radio: James Loewen on the Lies That Confederate Statues Tell

James Loewen’s books include Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, Lies My Teacher Told Me and Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. Earlier this year, he spoke at a symposium in Richmond on Confederate monuments and memorials, available on C-SPAN. And a couple of years ago he wrote an article in the Washington Post called “Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks read more