I've been concerned lately, watching the developing news about exo-geopolitical competition, the emergence of the BRICSA entente, and post-9/11 US "unipolarism," that we are watching the emergence of Cold War, Act Two. From the point of view of Realpolitik, the "war on terror" has been, in a certain sense, a fizzle. People aren't buying it, and a more powerful "adversary" is needed in the Hegelian dialectical scheme of things, and what better "rival" than a "resurgent Russia"(with all the appropriate demonizations of the Russian leadership in the Western press), a "threatening China", and a BRICSA bloc intent upon challenging western post-war international financial structure? In a certain sense, the moves by the BRICSA nations are predictable blowback against what I and others have been calling post-9/11 "unipolarism," so aptly announced by former president G.W. Bush: "if you're not with us, then you're against us."

To that end, it appears that RT (Russia Today), is picking up on the meme, and either that Russia is "playing its scripted roll," or that it is reacting quite reasonably to a geopolitical situation, or both:

US pushes to complete ‘project for military domination of entire planet’

The article is correct: the USA is the only nation on earth whose military has divided up the globe into area commands. (For those of you into the military symbolism, that would be the equivalent of putting seven "x's" over your headquarters units, with eight reserved for the Pentagram in Washington. In other words, we're way beyond army groups and theater commands even of World War Two.)

But there have been curious setbacks along the way: Russia has not rolled over and played dead. In fact, it has vigorously opposed American interventionism, first in South Ossetia in 2008, more recently in the Crimean peninsula, and, if the Russian version of the story is to be believed, in the USS Donald Cook incident, where a Russian Sukhoi-24 bomber apparently quite convincingly demonstrated Russia's ability to jam our most sophisticated missile defense system radars.

More recently, there was a grounding of civilizan airliners in the American southwest, and we now have three different versions of that story(sort of like all the versions of what really happened to Malaysia Air Flight 370). We were told, first, that the grounding occurred because of a computer glitch in a regional air traffic control facility. Then we were told a second story, that the system was affected by the overflight of an American U-2 spy plane. This story didn't really have wings, since U-2s fly all the time without apparent affect on the air traffic control system(if they fly any more at all).

Now there's a third possibility making the rounds on the internet, and it made me sit up and take notice:

Russian Strategic Bombers On West Coast: Did They Take Down LAX Air Traffic Control Systems?

Of all the stories floating out there about the grounding of flights in the Southwestern USA, this is the one that makes the most sense to me, and, following as it does the USS Donald Cook incident, it makes sense: if true, then it would mean a further demonstration of Russian capabilities, which, in the light of the equally mysterious take-downs of the Russian GLONASS satellites (Russia's equivalent system of GPS satellites), suggests two things: (1) America is not the "sole superpower," and (2) the two countries are once again in Cold War mode, poking sticks into each other's cages to see what the other side is capable of.

So what's the bottom line?

I think the answer is simple: we're watching the curtain being raised on Cold War, Act Two. But there's a difference this time, and it should give everyone pause: this time, in the eyes of world opinion, and even in the eyes of many Americans, it is the US power oligarchs, and not the power oligarchs in Moscow, who are "the bad guys." This time it is not "the evil empire", but the Pentagram empire, that is at fault, and the usual tricks of the trade - television programs extolling American heroism and military prowess and technology - are simply not working. At best, they are holding actions to maintain the intellectual grip on that portion of the American population that still believes in the Warren Report, and that there's nothing wrong with the system, while the protection racket expands even as popular support rapidly diminishes.

It's a recipe, as the Soviet Communists discovered, that is counter to their own long term interests.

See you on the flip side.