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Monday, November 22, 2010

Is China Challenging American Military Power?

clipped-animating missile contrail
John R. Houk
© November 22, 2010

Remember that breaking news incident a couple of weeks ago when the MSM and FOX News broke a story of a local CBS affiliate’s video of a “contrail” moving away from Los Angeles toward Catalina an island about 30 miles off the US coast?

I was faithfully watching FOX News that particularly. At that time FOX showed the KCBS footage seemingly as that local CBS affiliate began distributing its scoop. At that time the official US government response went something like: “What are you media guys talking about? We haven’t had any indication anything unidentified or threatening has been spotted near the California coast.” Through a considerable part of the day that was the line from the government, U.S. military defensive technology and government connected scientific community organizations and individuals.

In the morning of that “mystery” contrail FOX News showed a picture that had little clarity but was NOT just the contrail. That video had the appearance of a missile fuselage. From my television perspective there did not appear to be wings like a jet would have. I have to admit the video footage shown briefly was a bit blurry and the sight of wings or lack thereof could have been an optical interpretation of wishful thinking that an unexpected missile was discovered. I watched FOX News off and on quite a bit that day and the fuselage video or still was not ever shown again. ONLY the contrail was shown with various military and scientific experts beginning to appear assuring news addicts that the government version was accurate that no missile was accidently launched around the California coast.

Frankly I assumed that some military tech screwed up and the government was trying to cover its tracks over an embarrassing discovery by a relatively large media outlet in a LA local CBS affiliate. Rather than calling the report the result of fringe UFO’ers it would be difficult to call KCBS loony. Thus the next best way to cover up an error would be to explain away the error; thus the offering of scenarios of a commercial airliner providing an optical illusion of a missile contrail. I never thought anything else about the mystery. If it was a missile or a jet either way there was no harm so there was no foul to be concerned about.

I know if it was a missile and the government was trying to cover its tracks there was probably a question of safety for civilians, but I also know there would be no cooperation from the government or the US military without the smoking gun evidence. Without the smoking gun evidence connecting a cover up the incident would fall into the lore of difficult to explain Conspiracy Theory. I have to admit I do enjoy a good Conspiracy Theory especially it connects to personal suspicions, but I rarely spend any personal time on the hype. Thus I post a Conspiracy Theory once in awhile, but it is usually the work of someone else’s digging. Most recently I have been posting the Federal Reserve and New World Order Conspiracy Theory by Tony Newbill (go to SlantRight.com Search and type in Tony Newbill) mainly he is very dedicated to his theme and constantly sends emails for posting.

I received an email of World Net Daily updates on November 20th pointing to a November 19th story that was a reprint from WND’s subscription service called Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. The summary of the link got my attention; thus going to the WND story entitled “Experts: Mystery contrail was from Chinese missile” did get my attention. The story is pretty much what the title suggests. In this case the story purports a Communist Chinese submarine crept through US defenses and fired a warning missile close to California as a warning of Chinese military capability and that US defenses are penetrable. Now that is a Conspiracy Theory!

That is quite an accusation that goes way beyond my thoughts on a US military screw-up in which a low level military techno-geek pressed the wrong button launching an American missile that apparently went to a place of no harm. So, I decided to Google two or three scenarios to see if Joseph Farah had anyone who agreed with him.

What discovered is that a huge majority of the links rustled up by Google was very supportive of the idea that there was no missile but only a guess to what the contrail really was. Most of the websites and blogs that postulated a Chinese missile were using the Joseph Farah story as there source. I did find one source though. The website/blog Opinion Maker reposted two articles by Wayne Madsen. Without doing an independent search on info about Madsen, the Opinion Maker stories have this mini-bio on Madsen:

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. He has written for several renowned papers and blogs.

Madsen is a regular contributor on Russia Today. He has been a frequent political and national security commentator on Fox News and has also appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and MS-NBC. Madsen has taken on Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity on their television shows.  He has been invited to testifty (sic) as a witness before the US House of Representatives, the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and an (sic) terrorism investigation panel of the French government.

As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

Madsen is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO), and the National Press Club. He is a regular contributor to Opinion Maker.

Madsen’s bona fides is meant to assure the reader that he is not a Conspiracy Theory fringer. Here are the two posts from Wayne Madsen about the culpability of a Chinese sub launching a missile near the coast of California:



China has been creeping into super power status on the scale of challenging American global hegemony for some time. China has been flexing its economic muscle by owning a huge chunk of American debt. If the speculation is correct and China is flexing a confidant military muscle, what does that mean in the long term?

JRH 11/22/10

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