A funny thing happened on the way to World War. The bully got his pants handed to him in a most deliberate and quiet way you can imagine. In fact, the bully was so humiliated that he ran away with his tail between his legs and all his henchmen tendered their resignations.
So what the hell am I talking about, you ask? Great question!
First, the US Navy's officious version of it says that the USS Donald Cook, an AEGIS-class missile defense frigate, was over-flown no less than 12 times by an unarmed Russian Su-24 bombers in simulated attack runs. Shortly thereafter, the Cook made a run for Romania and the Navy brashly and bravely called the Russians "unprofessional".
That's one side of the story, and the other side is a bit harder to dig up, but according to this post, the Russian bomber was carrying their latest electronic warfare gear. As the Su-24 began its first pass, the AEGIS system locked on and started loading targeting information, such as speed, distance, et cetera.
Then suddenly, the screens went black. The Su-24 wasn't just evading RADAR, it had completely shut down the Navy's star air and missile defense system, and according to some other sources out there, they couldn't reboot or get the multi-billion dollar system to respond in any way.
Seemingly corroborating the story is Zero Hedge's take, saying that the NATO partners are just a bit alarmed that their protection racket ain't worth the money spent on it, especially since it turned tail and ran just half-way into it's "reassurance" mission.
Certainly, in the days since that incident, the US has become quite a bit more subdued in its sabre rattling, as the Masters of War sit in their hidey-holes scratching their highly decorated heads wondering just what the hell happened to their vaunted "defence" system.
You see, the fun in this story is not that the over-priced, over-sold and over-reaching US military got its butt in a sling because of those 'puny backward' Russians. It's that the Russians have just told the entire Western empire that it can be shut down very easily and within minutes.
Suppose this Russian 'scrambler' technology were mounted on satellites that could whizz by US intel and comm birds and click them off? Suppose it were quietly set up at key internet backbone sites? Suppose they could blind the US/NATO war-finance system with the flick of a switch? How much of this stuff do they have and where is it?
You can just hear the awed silence in the DC and Virginia bunkers as they try to figure out just what exactly they saw happen.
Right on the heels of this incident, Premier Putin signed a bill to establish a financial clearing system completely independent of the Western banking system. This system would likely serve Russia, China, India, South Africa, and Brazil, the so-called BRICS alliance. So what, you ask?
Well, one thing the Western empire has had going for it was that it sat atop every international financial transaction everywhere, and they were all denominated in dollars. Forget petrodollars, this is where the acton was, using high-speed transactions to front-run markets, manipulate FOREX and tinker with LIBOR. If the most powerful emerging markets in the world were to suddenly yank the plug on dollar trades and clearing...Katie bar the door.
That should happen about July, according to the new Russian law.
When the US leveled sanctions against key banks in Russia, cutting off the credit card accounts of key members of the Russian inner circle, that could only be done because the West holds the keys to the SWIFT system, which handles all MasterCard and VISA transactions, as well as inter-bank and international money movements. If you've ever transferred money to an overseas account, then you know that you need the receiver's name, bank account number and the bank's SWIFT number to do it. Think of it as the routing address for money blips on a screen somewhere.
Hell of a lot of power to have in a few hands when you can not only see all the transactions gong on around the world, but stop them on a whim.
Hell of a lot of power you can take away if you can go around that system, too.
Now, not only has Russia shown that it can switch off the SWIFT system by killing a few key satellites and backbone servers with a switch, it has stated quite openly with a public law that it will set up its own clearing and finance system by mid-year.
Oops.
Guess the banksters shouldn't have bet so many cookies on the Ukraine. Even worse, the oligarchs are over a barrel because the battle can now be taken to the 'high ground' of space communications, which has been the centerpiece of Western hegemony for so long.
The Russians can switch off satellites, the Chinese are releasing half-century old secrets with their little rover on the Moon, and India is going to Mars. It's the death of a thousand cuts writ large.
The US/NATO bullies are in a position now where they must either reveal one of their secret weapons, too, or face the fact that they are at least a couple of years behind and need to get the lead out or lose their precious strangle-hold on the world.
You might have missed it. The world changed pretty radically in the past couple of weeks. That clap of thunder in the distance was the sound of impending doom for the Western oligarchs unless they have some nifty tricks up their sleeves that they are willing to flash now.
The problem is that the US has no manned space program and its heavy lift system is still largely untested. They are hitching rides to the high ground with Russia, and in fact, Russia and China are the two leading space programs at the moment. If it doesn't have some amazing technology tucked away in a 'black' closet somewhere (as many suspect), then they are in a precarious spot trying to rule the world without access to the one thing they need to do it.
It's truly amazing what one little unarmed bomber can do flying around the Black Sea on a sunny afternoon. Hang on, though, the real fireworks should get underway any time now.