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Current time: July 22, 2025, 10:53 pm

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The Balloon
#41
RE: The Balloon
(February 5, 2023 at 12:16 am)Rev. Rye Wrote: It shouldn't have been too much of a revelation that a lot of Americans are paranoid about the PRC.  For fuck's sake, there's a good-sized proportion of the population that can only bring themselves to give a shit about COVID when they're reminded it was first found in China.

This is from The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter:

Quote:Events since 1939 have given the contemporary right-wing paranoid a vast theatre for his imagination, full of rich and proliferating detail, replete with realistic cues and undeniable proofs of the validity of his suspicions. The theatre of action is now the entire world, and he can draw not only on the events of World War II, but also on those of the Korean War and the Cold War. Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all.

I would add that it's not just the right wing any more.
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#42
RE: The Balloon
(February 4, 2023 at 7:55 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I wonder how many spy satellites, high-level spy planes, and drones the US has over China at any given moment.

there is no international agreement over exactly how high up a country’s sovereignty over its own airspace extend.    but every country agree it does not extend out of the atmophere into lower earth orbit.    if it did, then the space age will immediately come to an end because no earth orbiting satellite would be possible unless the owner of the satellite secure permission from every country the satellite can pass over.    

For satellites in polar orbit, that would be literally every country in the world. 

however, most countries think sovereign air space extends up at least as high as aircraft can fly,  so other people’s planes can’t just mosey on in whenever it pleases them.    And some planes can fly considerably higher than 60,000 feet.

So the upshot is this:

If this balloon was indeed a spy balloon, then china violated international law and international convention if she did indeed send it into US airspace on purpose. 

china and US can, however, freely send spy satellites over each other’s territory anytime each side wish, and that would be entirely consistent with international law and convention.
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#43
RE: The Balloon
(February 4, 2023 at 10:35 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:
(February 4, 2023 at 7:55 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I wonder how many spy satellites, high-level spy planes, and drones the US has over China at any given moment.

We don't do the U2s any  more. The Flying Telephone Poles (S-2s) rendered them moot.

yeah we do.  U2 is still in seevice
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#44
RE: The Balloon
This is the 20th anniversary of Colin Powell lying to the UN about anthrax in order to start a war.
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#45
RE: The Balloon
(February 5, 2023 at 2:51 am)Belacqua Wrote: This is the 20th anniversary of Colin Powell lying to the UN about anthrax in order to start a war.

Apart from that being an oversimplification, lying about stuff is what Republicans do.

Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
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#46
RE: The Balloon
(February 5, 2023 at 2:51 am)Belacqua Wrote: This is the 20th anniversary of Colin Powell lying to the UN about anthrax in order to start a war.
Also, the 20th anniversary of some of the US´ alleged "vassals", Germany and France, not participating.
In the process, Bush ordered the CIA and other organizations to destabilize and overthrow those states´governments, after economically ruining them by sanctions and asking the industrial military complex to help out.
Oh, wait....
Cetero censeo religionem delendam esse
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#47
RE: The Balloon
Scare all your American friends!!!

https://www.taobao.com/list/item/674733104978.htm
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#48
RE: The Balloon
So, apparently, China is angry because it got its balloon down that was only doing some experiments. I mean how can these people be serious? If you really want to do experiments in other countries (or above them) would you not need first to ask for permission?
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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#49
RE: The Balloon
Divers will be retrieving that sucker. When you shoot something down it's easy to determine its "final resting place."
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#50
RE: The Balloon
Most of these lost balloons are never recovered even when there was a preexisting plan in place to recover them. They'd be looking for a package that a roughly 10ft balloon could have lifted - assuming it survives the fall and they tracked it down and can reach it. It had it's highest potential counter-intel value (just running with chinese ufo spy airship thing for shits and giggles) while it was still aloft. When it could be surveilled, when it could be fed disinfo.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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