For today, links to commentary from MintPress News via ScheerPost, and to reports from Reuters and National Public Radio; other published material is accessible by clicking on their names or initials below. (GAZA and UKRAINE entries for this date, so far, are HERE and HERE and HERE.) — MCM

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FROM DEC. 17  Privatizing Syria: U.S. plans to sell off a nation’s wealth after Assad, by Kit Klarenberg | MintPress News / ScheerPost  Syria’s economic independence and strength under Assad’s rule and the benefits reaped by average citizens as a result were never acknowledged in the mainstream before or during the decade-long proxy war. Yet countless reports from major international institutions underline this reality – which has now been brutally vanquished, never to return. READ MORE . . .

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In first in-person contact, U.S. officials met Syria’s HTS in Damascus, by Humeyra Pamuk and Amina Ismail | Reuters  WASHINGTON / DAMASCUS — U.S. diplomats visiting Damascus held Washington’s first in-person official meetings with Syria’s new de facto rulers led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham today and discussed with the former al Qaeda affiliate the future of Syria’s political transition. READ MORE . . .

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Hear the latest on developments in Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. Reported by Hadeel Al-Shalchi and Steve Inskeep | NPR  Syria’s new rulers are forming a government after more than half a century of dictatorship under former leader Bashar al-Assad and his father. READ MORE . . .