GHASSAN KADI—We are told that the value of any country’s currency is a reflection of its wealth. Wealth is, or at least used to be, described in terms of the country’s resources, manufacturing base and exports. When historically powerful nations had little resources to generate more wealth, they developed their manufacturing industries and ventured overseas, captured colonies, robbed their resources and turned them into raw material that their industries could use to generate export and wealth.
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LA JENNINGS—Gladiators may have been gods to some portion of the Roman populace, but they were considered to be, legally and morally, part of the lowest social rung, classified alongside actors and male prostitutes as infamia (ill-repute). However, Cicero, an attorney and Stoic in 1st century B.C.E., believed that gladiator contests were “a noble and educational art,” where the combatants showed self-control and grace in the face of death. The Stoics may have admired the behavior of the gladiators themselves, but they reviewed the crowds with distain, for excitement and other strong emotions had no place in a disciplined mind. Later Roman philosophers condemned gladiator contests as crude and harmful to Roman morale.
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RT.COM—The Russian Defense Ministry has repeatedly warned that the militants in Idlib have been preparing a false-flag attack using chemical weapons to justify the US strike against the forces loyal to the Syrian government. On Saturday, the ministry’s spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said that these preparations had entered their “final stage.”
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CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—So don’t be fooled. Remember, the reason they work so hard to manufacture our consent for these agendas is because they need that consent in order to operate. If they try to operate without our consent, they will lose control of the narrative, and thus lose their ability to propagandize us effectively. So don’t give them your consent. Fight their lies on all fronts, using truth, skepticism and critical thinking as your weapon. Stand tall, shine bright, refuse to be ignored, don’t wait for your turn to speak, use unmitigated speech, say what needs to be said and say it like you’re right, because you are. Let a giant “NO” to this manipulation roar through us all. Let the Syrian people be free from imperialist agendas once and for all. Let us all be free from imperialist agendas once and for all. End the madness and begin moving into sanity.
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ERIC ZUESSE—Simon’s lumping “Bashar al-Assad’s regime and ISIS” together was striking, because ISIS has actually been one of the major forces in Syria working to overthrow “Assad’s regime”; and, “Assad’s regime” was elected in 2014 and has been shown by repeated polling done since then by the British firm of Orb International to retain more support amongst the Syrian public than does anyone else to serve as that nation’s leader. Polls taken in the U.S. today show that more of the public wish that Bernie Sanders were our President than Donald Trump; and, so, if Syria is a “regime” instead of a “government,” then the U.S. is even more of a regime than is Syria.
