Op-Ed

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — For those who believe in the virtue of central bank economic stimulus, the moment of truth has finally arrived. Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen announced late last month that the Fed plans to start shrinking its balance sheet for the first time since it expanded from less than $900 billion in 2008 to an unprecedented $4.5 trillion today.

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — On October 7, 2017, Newsweek published an opinion piece by Tom Ridge, former Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush. The article attempted to explain why the U.S. is correct to pursue regime change in Iran. According to Ridge, the U.S. doesn’t merely want regime change in Iran, it needs it.
Working our way backward, Ridge’s concluding paragraph states that:

We’ve entered a new era, the Imagination Age, so why are we still schooling kids like we did in the 19th Century?

(FEE) — Our current compulsory schooling model was created at the dawn of the Industrial Age. As factories replaced farm work and production moved swiftly outside of homes and into the larger marketplace, 19th century American schooling mirrored the factories that most students would ultimately join.

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — “Not sure whether China will be nice to self-ruled Taiwan? Wait until after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party. What’s in store for the hotly disputed, resource-rich South China Sea, where Beijing has taken a military and technological lead since 2010? Wait until after the Congress. Coffee maker wouldn’t start today? Wait until after the Congress. Wait. But you get the idea: This event, due to start Oct. 18, is monumental enough to put a lot of Asia on hold — and make it worry.”

The Catalonia crisis is a strong hint from history that Europe needs to develop a new type of sovereignty, one that strengthens cities and regions, dissolves national particularism, and upholds democratic norms. Imagining a pan-European democracy is the prerequisite for imagining a Europe worth saving.

October 1 showed the US why we need civilian guns.

(FEE) — Since the tragic murder of 59 peaceful concertgoers in Las Vegas Sunday, I’ve heard well-intentioned Americans from all political corners echoing heartbroken and tempting refrains:

Can’t we just ban guns?
Surely we can all get together on the rocket launchers.
Things like this would happen less often.
We have enough military.

(RPI) — With President Trump again facing the requirement to certify whether Iran is complying with the P5+1 nuclear deal this month, it looks like a major clash may be brewing between the president and the neocons on one side, and the military generals he openly embraces in his Administration on the other. What might normally be a fairly automatic and objective process is looking more like a clash of the titans for the Administration.

(TFC Op-ed) — It’s time to separate fact from fiction and plausible from impossible. It’s also time to address some physics that is leading to lots of confusion. The Vegas shooting is the biggest mass shooting since Wounded Knee. With such a tragic event, it stands to reason people would be searching for answers. The answers are only important if you’re asking the right questions.

(RPI) — Now that the defeat of ISIS in Syria appears imminent, with the Syrian army clearing out some of the last ISIS strongholds in the east, Washington’s interventionists are searching for new excuses to maintain the illegal US military presence in the country. Their original rationale for intervention has long been exposed as another lie.

As the U.S. government doles out tens of millions of dollars to “combat Russian propaganda,” one result is a slew of new “studies” by “scholars” and “researchers” auditioning for the loot, reports Robert Parry.