THE GLOBAL RULING CLASS

PHIL GIRALDI—First of all, an anti-missile interceptor must hit its target head on or nearly so and it must either actually strike the target or explode its own warhead at a close enough distance to be effective. Both objectives are difficult to achieve. An Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) travels at 5,000 meters per second. By way of comparison a bullet fired from a rifle travels at about one fifth that speed. Imagine two men with rifles standing a mile apart and firing their weapons in an attempt to have the bullets meet head on. Multiply the speed by five if one is referring to missiles, not bullets. Even using the finest radars and sensors as well as the most advanced guidance technologies, the variables involved make it much more likely that there will be a miss than a hit. Cirincione observes that “…the only way to hit a bullet is if the bullet cooperates.”

JOHN WALSH—It is no exaggeration to say that the Singapore Summit is the biggest step toward peace on the Korean Peninsula since President Dwight Eisenhower lived up to his 1952 campaign promise to “go to Korea” and end Truman’s deeply unpopular war, which had claimed millions of Korean lives, 1 million Chinese lives and tens of thousands of American ones. Ike ended that genocidal war, which had slaughtered 20% of the population of North Korea primarily due to bombing and chemical weapons. An armistice was negotiated quickly and so the killing stopped, but a formal treaty of peace proved politically impossible. (Ike, the peacemaker, was criticized by the media for being inarticulate and stupid and for spending too much time on the golf course. And he had a mistress. Sound familiar? But he brought peace.)

BILL VAN AUKEN—Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis Monday indicated that the more than 2,000 US troops presently deployed inside Syria would not be going anywhere anytime soon. “We do not want to pull out before the diplomats have won the peace,” he said. “You win the fight—and then you win the peace.”

DANNY HAIPHONG/ Randi Nord—Although Iran does not support Ansarullah with military equipment and weapons, the US SAYS they do. The real problem is that they don’t want an anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist government on the Arabian Peninsula controlling the Red Sea and giving the civilian population in the monarchies any ideas. The mere possibility that a Yemeni government could ally with the Iran axis is enough for the US to say they already do and carry out military intervention accordingly.

ERIC ZUESSE—We are now getting closer and closer to what, quite possibly, could turn out to be a war between U.S. and Russia — a world-ending World War III — and, therefore, I, as an investigative historian, am trying to understand, as accurately as I can, the historical origins of this potentially world-ending conflict, the ‘new Cold War’. In this regard, I am examining the event, the 2012 Magnitsky Act, in the United States (and then copied in the EU), which imposed the first set of economic sanctions against Russia, and thus may reasonably be said to have sparked ‘the new Cold War’.