“Russia’s invasion of the breakaway Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and parts of Georgia itself signals the most serious East-West confrontation since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. But does it mark the beginning of another cold war? There’s definitely a chill. It’s tempting to proclaim ‘a plague on all your houses.’ The Bush administration helped inflame anti-West sentiment in Russia when it openly supported Georgian membership in NATO last April. Russia has encouraged separatist aspirations in the two disputed provinces for years and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili ordered an earlier attack that killed civilians and Russian military personnel in South Ossetia, which became the impetus for the Russian invasion.” [editor’s note: To the extent that BOTH nation-states (the ongoing USA and the core of the former USSR) have exhibited the desire to become (or become again) imperial despotic warmongers … the “plague” pronouncement is all too appropriate! - SAT] (09/07/08)