From antiwar.com
Missile Test Terrorism Over Los Angeles
As Cold War tensions ratchet, the empire puts on an ICBM light show over its own most densely populated region
by Dan Sanchez
“Wait, what the f*** is that?”
Julien Solomita finally managed to spit that out after two
minutes of dumbfounded silence as he recorded an unidentified flying
object from a rooftop parking lot in Van Nuys, California on Saturday
night.
He had been gathering footage for his video blog when he
noticed a strange light in the sky. The light flared several times
before developing a tail that expanded into a purple cone. The object
then radiated nebulous purple rings and burst into a bright white bullet
at the front of a huge white cloud, through which a vivid blue streak
trailed across the night sky. Afterward, Solomita
said:
“For a brief moment, when the cloud got bigger, I was wondering, ‘Should we run?’ It looked so close.”
His
video
has been viewed over 6 million times on YouTube. And the phenomenon was
seen as far north as San Francisco and as far inland as Utah.
Photographer Abe Blair got
pictures
of it above the San Francisco skyline, with the Golden Gate Bridge and
Sutro Tower in view. And Justin Majeczky managed to capture it with
time-lapse photography from a similar vantage.
Social media
exploded with reports of UFO, comet, or missile sightings.
As the US military
confirmed,
it was indeed a missile, and a nuclear-capable one too. What everyone
saw was a test-fire of a Trident II intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) from a submarine off the coast. The bursts and flare-ups were
probably the engine separations of the three-stage rocket.
The Pentagon claimed it was part of “scheduled, ongoing
tests.” However, the launch was unannounced, except for being
mysteriously foreshadowed the night before when the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) declared that all Los Angeles International airport
(LAX) traffic must avoid flying over the nearby waters of the Pacific.
A second test-launch off the west coast was conducted Monday afternoon.
Following the launches, John M. Daniels, spokesman for what amounts to the Navy’s Armageddon Office,
stressed that:
“It’s important that we test these missiles for our national security…”
How exactly would it enhance “national security” to test
ICBMs in clear view of America’s second-biggest city? A hint was
provided when
The Los Angeles Times reported that:
“The Navy is considering posting additional
photos — and possibly video — of the missile launches after the current
exercises are completed, Daniels said, but it has yet to decide.”
This was more a demonstration than a test. That is the only plausible explanation for giving such a public light show.
A demonstration for the benefit of whom? Well it was over the Pacific, across which the US has been
playing warship “chicken” with nuclear China in the South China Sea as part of its “Asian Pivot.”
Then of course there is Russia. The
new Cold War with that nuclear power has ratcheted up after Russian entry into the Syrian war. As Justin Raimondo recently
wrote:
“…the US and its NATO allies are
prepositioning heavy weaponry on their eastern frontier and
doubling the size of [the US/NATO] ‘Response Force’ in Europe.”
And as Jason Ditz
reported,
the Pentagon is trying to use tensions with Russia to justify a
long-running, “massively expensive plan to revamp the entire US nuclear
weapons arsenal.”
“As a result of doing these operations, it does show any adversary that would wish to do us harm the capabilities that we have…”
Loren Thompson, a military analyst and nuclear strategy expert,
thought that the saber-rattling was mishandled:
“You could have demonstrated same point to the
Russians or the Chinese without getting people really concerned in L.A. I
suspect the Navy underestimated the social media reaction they were
going to get.”
Thompson should cure his naïveté by reading some
Randolph Bourne.
The chief reason that governments wage wars, hot or cold, against
foreign enemies is to use the “national emergency” to better dominate
domestic enemies: its own subjects.
The unnerving spectacle made its biggest impression on the
Americans who saw it first-hand. And they were probably its chief
intended audience. “Getting people really concerned in L.A.” is exactly
what the regime wanted.
Why else would the government clear the skies to paint them
with nuclear war games precisely when and where it would have the
biggest audience with the best visibility: near a basin full of people
in the
most densely populated region
in the country, at a time (around 6:00 pm) when it is nice and dark,
yet millions would be out and about, returning from work, or heading out
to dinner?
This was “Shock and Awe” for domestic consumption: an exercise in missile test terrorism. A
spooked herd is an easily steered and stampeded herd. And what better way to spook the American herd than by giving it nuclear nightmares?