https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-balloon-obsession-attempt-prevent-detente-china/5807504?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles
America’s Balloon Obsession Is an Attempt to Prevent Detente with China
For the last several days, the mainstream propaganda machine diverted its attention from the mandatory “evil Russia” narrative and focused on 24/7 coverage of a weather balloon. Although the media frenzy was part of the “evil China” narrative, this one is not as omnipresent as that about Russia, at least not yet. The rather bizarre overfocus on such a trivial matter still has its propaganda purpose, as the “spy balloon”, while insignificant at a glance, fulfilled an important geopolitical goal for the United States.
First, the idea that a superpower such as China needs weather balloons to effectively spy on the US is quite laughable, as the Asian giant has more than enough surveillance satellites for that purpose, both military and civilian, to say nothing of its intelligence services and other means of collecting information. Second, weather balloons are simply too obvious and, thus, too (geo)politically sensitive to be used for that purpose, not to mention they’re not exactly the most steerable aircraft and are also quite slow, meaning they take quite a lot of time to reach the desired location.
Eventually, the US Air Force sent its much-touted F-22 fighter jets to shoot down the balloon. The coverage of the shootdown was quite embarrassing, to say the least, as the F-22 “Raptor” is an extremely expensive aircraft and it made no sense to use it for such a trivial matter. The jet that costs $334 million apiece and nearly $70,000 per flight hour fired a nearly half a million dollar missile to down a weather balloon, but the media presented it as if the target was no less than an alien spacecraft invading the US. There are now even photos of an F-22 with the balloon painted on it as its first air-to-air kill.
The balloon was also presented as some pinnacle of Chinese technology, despite the fact that Beijing operates satellites, hypersonic surveillance drones and other truly high-end technologies, some of which even the US itself lacks. Additionally, according to the US, China suddenly decided to send a weather balloon to spy on America’s “Minuteman 3” ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) silos right after it invited the US Secretary of States Anthony Blinken to visit Beijing. Worse yet, it supposedly did so on the eve of the visit, despite China’s insistence that Blinken also meets President Xi Jinping.
Such diplomatic and (geo)political absurdity can hardly be expected from China, as it simply makes no sense for Beijing to try and make yet another peaceful overture toward the US only to sabotage its own efforts by sending a “spy balloon” over the most obvious spy target in the continental US. Even the Pentagon confirmed that “it had been tracking the balloon for quite some time” and that “it wasn’t the first time such an incident occurred”. So, again, the question is, why did the US military decide to go public with the “spy balloon” story at this exact moment? The fact that Anthony Blinken announced he is postponing his visit to China is quite indicative of America’s goal in this case.
China insists that the weather balloon is indeed just that – a weather balloon that has drifted too far from its course and ended up in US airspace. The Washington Post quoted national security experts who confirmed this and stated that “the craft appears to share characteristics with high-altitude balloons used by developed countries around the world for weather forecasting.” The Pentagon itself also confirmed this and stated that “the payload wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites” and that “the balloon posed no serious physical or intelligence threat”.
Again, this begs the question as to why the Pentagon even made the public announcement and why the US corporate and state-run media decided to go for such bizarre coverage. It’s simply impossible not to connect the story to the deteriorating US-China relations and the fact that Washington DC is doing everything in its power (bar direct war, for now, at least) to make sure the relationship between the two global powers stays on the collision course. Blinken’s visit, as previously mentioned initiated by Beijing, could have been a crucial step toward some form of detente between the US and China.
However, with an “evil Chinese spy balloon flying over American ICBM silos” Washington DC has a “perfect” (in reality, ludicrous) excuse to continue its incessant escalation with the Asian giant. The continuous US belligerence can only be explained by the fact that Washington DC is simply afraid to let China develop peacefully, since American political elites are perfectly aware that they are falling behind the Asian giant in virtually every metric, be it economy, technology, military, etc. It’s the only viable explanation for such a sudden obsession with a weather balloon.
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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/02/10/my-sources-corroborate-sy-hershs-nord-stream-report-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
My Sources Corroborate Sy Hersh’s Nord Stream Report: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
My sources corroborate Seymour Hersh’s report that the US was behind the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. (My sources are logic, common sense, and public statements by US government officials.)
If Putin and senior Russian officials had said what Biden and senior US officials have been saying about how much they hate the Nord Stream pipelines and how great it is that they were bombed, every member of the western political/media class would blame Russia for the bombing, and we would never hear the end of it.
Russia would stand nothing to gain by bombing its own pipeline whose gas flow it could control on its own end, while US officials are openly acknowledging that the US benefits from it directly. It’s just so silly how imperial spinmeisters are falling all over themselves to dismiss a claim they all privately know is true because it’s so glaringly obvious.
The Nord Stream sabotage is like what 9/11 would look like if before 9/11 you had top US officials saying “Yeah we’re definitely going to bring an end to the World Trade Center” and then after 9/11 they were saying “It’s good that the World Trade Center was destroyed because it advances our interests.” The compilations of evidence we’ve been seeing that the US was behind this attack look a lot like the evidence compiled by 9/11 conspiracy analysts, except the evidence is way stronger and US officials are pretty much saying they did it in plain English.
It’s just a basic fact that conspiracies happen. Powerful people do conspire with each other, and they are often able to keep their conspiring secret for a very long time. It really is a cruel joke how our rulers hide their actions behind thick veils of government secrecy, punish anyone who tries to look behind those veils with harsh prison sentences, and then have the gall to smear those who try to form theories about what they’re doing behind those veils as “conspiracy theorists”.
Just something to keep in mind as the mad narrative management scramble to brand Sy Hersh a “conspiracy theorist” continues.
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The empire has been frantically ramping up propaganda and censorship because its “great power competition” against Russia and China is going to require economic warfare, massive military spending, and nuclear brinkmanship that no one would consent to without lots of manipulation.
Economic warfare, exploded military spending and nuclear brinkmanship all harm/threaten the interests of the rank-and-file public. Nobody’s going to consent to being made poorer and less safe over some global power struggle that doesn’t benefit them without being manipulated to.
That’s why the media have been acting so weird lately, that’s why dissident voices are getting harder and harder to find online, and that’s the purpose of the new “fact-checking” industry and other forms of narrative control. Controlling the narrative is growing more crucial.
It would never occur to a normal person that China needs to be made to submit to US interests and that economic sacrifices must be made to attain this goal which make their wallet lighter, for example. That’s the kind of change you can only get consent for if you manufacture that consent. The fact that the empire’s “great power competition” happens to be occurring at the same time as widespread access to the internet means that drastic measures must be made to ensure the empire’s information dominance so it can march the public into playing along with this agenda.
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So many Americans in my social media notifications bought fully into the shrieking hysteria about a fucking balloon the other day. Doesn’t bode well for how critically they’ll be thinking once the anti-China propaganda campaign really gets going.
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Still blows my mind how the empire can rob Americans blind, keep them poor, deprive them of all normal social safety nets, oppress them, exploit them, throw them into the largest prison system on earth, work them into the ground, and then convince them to be angry at China.
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All major US foreign policy maneuvers in today’s world are ultimately about preventing China from becoming an obstacle to US planetary rule. That’s all its shenanigans with Russia, Iran etc are ultimately about, and it’s what Ukraine is about too. If you don’t see this, you’re not seeing anything.
If you say you oppose US foreign policy toward Russia but not toward China, then you don’t really oppose US foreign policy toward Russia, because it’s the same foreign policy. They’re just two aspects of the same one agenda.
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Rank-and-file Australians are so pathetically aligned with US interests in their opinions because we have the most concentrated media ownership in the western world — a huge amount of it by Murdoch, who has been intimately intertwined with US government agencies for many decades.
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A sizeable percentage of the people who shriek at me for criticizing US foreign policy are Bernie Sanders progressives and self-described “anarchists”. Very few of the people who think of themselves as fighting the power and opposing tyranny actually do.
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The best measure of character for a journalist, analyst or commentator is whether they spend their time punching up or punching down. Are they always throwing shots at the world’s top power structure, or are they punching at weaker governments, other commentators, “tankies”, marginalized groups, etc?
This is the best measure of character because consistently throwing punches at the very top is the least effective way to rise in influence and build a brand, because those who facilitate the interests of the powerful will be uplifted and amplified by the establishment power structure while those who work against those interests will not be. Someone who’s only ever punching up as high as possible — never down or laterally — is more likely to be in it for nobler reasons than fame and fortune.
This is also a good way to evaluate your own character. Are you always punching up as high as your arms can reach? Or are you getting lost in sectarianism, social media drama, or power-serving attacks on parts of the rank-and-file public? How high are your fists going? It’s a good habit to check in on this from time to time.
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https://stephenlendman.org/2023/02/08/worst-ever-state-of-the-union-in-us-history/
Worst Ever State of the Union in US History
With lines scripted for him to recite via teleprompter, crib notes, and an earpiece for instructions, the fake Biden mumbled and bumbled through the regime’s Tuesday state of the union (SOTU) address for 72 painful-to-hear minutes.
It came at a time when undemocratic Dems are waging war at home on Americans targeted for elimination by kill shots and abroad against militarily, morally and ethically superior Russia — what risks humanity-destroying nuclear war if push things too far.
The fake Biden is an embarrassment to what leadership is supposed to be, what’s absent with undemocratic Dems in charge — especially with an imposter, a detached from reality buffoon in the White House.
This year’s SOTU came at a time of hegemon USA’s war against invented enemy Russia, a must-win conflict it’s losing to a superior foe.
Throughout the post-WW II period, the empire of lies and mass-deception always picked fights with militarily inferior nations free from its control — until overstepping by challenging Russia belligerently in support of Nazi-infested Ukraine, a major strategic blunder for which it’s paying dearly.
Separately in response to international community calls for the Biden regime to aid rescue work in earthquake-devastated northern Syria by lifting illegally imposed sanctions, interventionist Blinken’s so-called spokesman, Price, showed contempt for its people in need by the following perversion of reality remarks, saying:
“It would be…counterproductive for us to reach out to a government” on the US target list for regime change for not subordinating its sovereignty and rights of its people to a higher power in Washington.
And this perversion of reality from Price, falsely claiming that the empire of lies and forever wars on invented enemies provided “more humanitarian assistance to the people of Syria than any other country (sic)” — a bald-faced Big Lie by a regime waging all-out war on nations free from its diabolical control.
Following Obama/Biden regime aggression against Syria in 2011, the empire of lies continued waging war on the country and its people by hot and other means.
At this time, hegemon USA illegally controls about one-third of Syrian territory, including its oil-rich areas and most fertile agricultural land.
Hegemon USA’s so-called 2020 Caesar Act is all about wanting 17 million Syrians starved into submission for failure of Damascus to bend to the will of the empire of lies and forever wars.
At the time of its enactment into US law, Syrian envoy to Russia, Riyad Haddad, explained that threatened US sanctions under the measure “not only target Syria, they directly or indirectly jeopardize all its allies and are also aimed against Persian Gulf countries, so that none of these countries dares to invest in” the Syrian Arab Republic.
“And each party that will say it wants to invest, must get permission from the US.”
The measure is similar to US state terror and illegal sanctions war on Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries free from its control, what aims to inflict enormous harm on their people.
At this time, US hostility toward sovereign independent nations is a sideshow compared to its aggression against Russia, what poses an ominous risk of humanity-destroying nuclear war.
As in virtually all his public remarks, the fake Biden’s SOTU trampled on truth by a litany of pre-scripted bald-faced Big Lies.
It’s how the empire of lies operates on the world stage, treating truth and full disclosure of major issues as mortal enemies.
On March 11, 2022, the fake Biden called tanks to Nazi-infested Ukraine “WW III.”
Launched preemptively by the empire of lies against nonthreatening Russia, it’s been raging long before the fake Biden “announc(ed) that (hegemon USA) will be sending ‘Abram’ tanks to Ukrain(ian)” Nazis days earlier.
Will F-16 or other US warplanes follow — for Russia to target and destroy in flight?
The Russian Federation controls Ukrainian airspace and offshore waters.
Its high-precision hypersonic missiles can target and destroy anything threatening its security.
Sounding detached from reality and delusional, the fake Biden ignored reality about more monster than nation-state USA.
He ignored how Russia is outgunning, outmaneuvering, outwitting and defeating Nazi-infested Ukraine and the empire of lies at the same time.
And at a time of perpetual wars by hot and/or other means on invented enemies, soaring inflation and deepening economic weakness, the fake Biden pretended that Americans never had things better than since undemocratic Dems usurped power in 2020 by brazen election rigging.
And once again he ignored that what’s called covid is seasonal flu renamed, that kill shots are designed to destroy health, that democracy in the US/West exists in fantasy form alone — the real thing not tolerated at home or abroad.
What he called “the great American story” is a humanity-destroying monster.
Tucker Carlson is an exception to dominant fourth estate rubbish.
Commenting on the fake Biden’s Tuesday night SOTU before delivered, he said:
“(I)t would take a lot of brass to stand up on live television and claim that the (empire of lies and forever wars) is better off than it was when you took over” when reality is worlds apart different.
As long as undemocratic Dems run things, the ominous risk of nuclear war will threaten humanity’s survival.
Carlson correctly expected not “a single honest word” from the White House imposter in his SOTU address.
Instead of truth and full disclosure, he recited a litany of bald-faced Big Lies about all things domestic and geopolitical.
He didn’t run for president.
He was installed unelected to serve wealth, power and privileged interests exclusively at the expense of peace and beneficial social change.
At the same time, the regime he represents is waging war on Russia and losing badly to its military and tactical superiority.
On the home front, real inflation as calculated pre-1990 is 16.2%.
Most jobs created are rotten part-time ones paying poverty or sub-poverty wages with few or no benefits.
What the fake Biden called “near record low unemployment for Black and Hispanic workers” is pure fiction.
At a time when the nation’s industrial base operates in low-wage countries, he lied claiming that the empire of lies “created 800,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs, the fastest growth in 40 years (sic).”
He compounded his Big Lie by falsely claiming that “we’re exporting American products and creating American jobs (sic).”
He turned truth on its head and trampled on it by falsely blaming Russia for made-in-the-USA inflation, a fake pandemic and perpetual war-making on invented enemies.
Virtually every positive claim he made was a bald-faced Big Lie — reflecting his detachment from reality.
The empire of lies and perpetual wars on invented enemies is declining because of its imperial arrogance, its endless wars against invented enemies, and unwillingness to change its wicked ways.
The fake Biden is symbolic of hegemon USA’s nonexistent exceptionalism, its illusory moral superiority and fantasy military supremacy.
It’s the same dynamic that doomed other empires in world history.
The long ago founded US republic no longer exists, replaced by the imperial state and ruinous military Keynesianism while vital homeland needs go begging.
China, Russia and other independent nations are rising in preeminence on the world stage at a time of hegemon USA’s fall from grace with no prospect of turning things around.
The nation I grew up in long ago no longer exists.
A humanity-destroying monster replaced it.
If not effectively challenged and changed, US-launched nuclear war may kill us all.
A Final Comment
The fake Biden lied and mass-deceived by pretending to represent “all Americans.”
He was installed unelected to wage perpetual wars by hot and/or other means on invented enemies to serve wealth, power and privileged interests exclusively.
The regime he represents is an unparalleled menace to humanity at home and worldwide.
As long as it’s empowered, we’re more greatly endangered than ever before in world history because of its contempt for peace in favor of perpetual war-making on invented enemies.
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