US Officials Now Say Chinese "Spy Balloon" Flew Over The US Accidentally by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2023-02-15 at 00:24:34 )

US Officials Now Say Chinese "Spy Balloon" Flew Over The US Accidentally by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!

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The Washington Post has a weird new article out citing multiple anonymous United States officials saying that the Chinese "spy balloon" we have been hearing about for the last two weeks was never intended for a surveillance mission over North America at all.

The article is titled "United States tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path," and throughout it alternates between the objective journalistic terms "suspected spy balloon" and "suspected Chinese surveillance balloon" and the United States governments terms "spy balloon" and "airborne surveillance device". There is at this time no publicly available evidence that the balloon which was famously shot down on February 4th was in fact an instrument of Chinese espionage; the Chinese government has said that the balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that got blown off course, and the Pentagons own assessment is that a Chinese spy balloon would not "create significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in Low Earth Orbit."

What makes the article so weird is that it actually contains claims which substantiate Beijings assertion that this was in fact a balloon that got blown off course, yet it keeps repeating the unevidenced claim that it was a "spy balloon". Here is an excerpt, emphasis mine:

-By the time a Chinese spy balloon crossed into American airspace late last month, United States military and intelligence agencies had been tracking it for nearly a week, watching as it lifted off from its home base on Hainan Island near Chinas south coast.

United States monitors watched as the balloon settled into a flight path that would appear to have taken it over the United States territory of Guam. But somewhere along that easterly route, the craft took an unexpected northern turn, according to several United States officials, who said that analysts are now examining the possibility that China did not intend to penetrate the American heartland with their airborne surveillance device.

The balloon floated over Alaskas Aleutian Islands thousands of miles away from Guam, then drifted over Canada, where it encountered strong winds that appear to have pushed the balloon south into the continental United States, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive intelligence.

That 1st balloon seemed designed to spy on US assets in Guam, maybe Hawaii - but weather currents sent it way north to Alaska & beyond.

Rare time when capitalweather teams up with intel expert-snakashimae - for big scoop.-Paul Kane (pkcapitol) February 14, 2023

The article really reads like someone trying to reconcile two contradictory narratives, claiming that although China did not intend to send the balloon over the United States, it decided to seize the opportunity to surveil United States nuclear sites while it was there anyway.

"Its crossing into United States airspace was a violation of sovereignty and its hovering over sensitive nuclear sites in Montana was no accident, officials said, raising the possibility that even if the balloon were inadvertently blown over the United States mainland, Beijing apparently decided to seize the opportunity to try to gather intelligence," write the articles authors Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris, and Jason Samenow.

"Intelligence analysts are unsure whether the apparent deviation was intentional or accidental, but are confident it was intended for surveillance, most likely over United States military installations in the Pacific," they write.

No mention is made of the two weeks of hysterical shrieking from the western political-media class about Chinas outrageously brazen intrusion into United States airspace, or the claims from conservative China hawks that it proves President Biden has failed to make Beijing sufficiently afraid of American might. No mention is made of the rhetoric from warmongers like House China Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher, who claimed the balloon is evidence that China is "a threat to American sovereignty, and it is a threat to the Midwest - in places like those that I live in." And no mention is made of the White Houses recent admission that the three unidentified objects that United States war planes shot down over the weekend were most likely benign balloons.

"The intelligence communitys considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose," the National Security Councils John Kirby told the press on Tuesday.

So it is entirely possible that the American political-media class has been spending the month of February furiously demanding more militarism and more cold war escalations over four harmless balloons. It is entirely possible that the worlds mightiest air force just spent two weeks waging kinetic aerial warfare on random pieces of junk in the sky. And that this is being used to manufacture consent for more aggressions against China.

Media "Spy Balloon" Obsession a Gift to China Hawks-Find Us FAIR at Mastodon.World (FAIRmediawatch) February 10, 2023

In a recent article titled "Media "Spy Balloon" Obsession a Gift to China Hawks," Fair.orgs Julianne Tveten documents the ways the western media have been committing journalistic malpractice with their obedient regurgitation of United States government slogans about a "Chinese spy balloon" despite a complete lack of evidence for this claim:

Despite this uncertainty, United States media overwhelmingly interpreted the Pentagons conjecture as fact. The New York Times (2-2-23) reported that "the United States has detected what it says is a Chinese surveillance balloon," only to call the device "the spy balloon"-without attributive language-within the same article. Similar evolution happened at CNBC, where the description shifted from "suspected Chinese spy balloon" (2-6-23) to simply "Chinese spy balloon" (2-6-23). The Guardian once bothered to place "spy balloon" in quotation marks (2-5-23), but soon abandoned that punctuation (2-6-23).

Given that media had no proof of either explanation, it might stand to reason that outlets would give each possibility-spy balloon vs. weather balloon-equal attention. Yet media were far more interested in lending credence to the United States official narrative than to that of China.

And of course getting lost in all this is the obvious fact that it is no big deal for major governments to spy on each other; they all do so constantly, and the United States does it more than anyone else. To suddenly treat increasingly flimsy claims about Chinese spy balloons as some kind of incendiary existential threat is ridiculous!!

The United States shot down the Chinese balloon and other mysterious "objects," claiming that they were a threat to our airspace.

When Cuba did the same thing in 1962 - and Iran more recently - the United States nearly started a war for its right to spy on foreign countries.-Matthew Petti (matthew_petti) February 14, 2023

As commentator Matthew Petti recently observed on Substack, the United States has historically been so insistent on its right to fly surveillance aircraft over foreign countries that it has repeatedly come close to war with nations who have shot down its spy planes. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, then-attorney general Robert Kennedy issued a red-line threat to the Soviet ambassador that if the Cuban military did not stop shooting United States spy planes, the United States would launch an invasion of Cuba. Just in 2018 the United States came close to the brink of war with Iran when its military shot down a United States surveillance drone, and was only averted because Donald Trump was talked out of it by TV pundit Tucker Carlson.

If the United States insists on its right to conduct aerial surveillance on foreign nations, it is a bit silly for it to throw a tantrum when foreign nations return the favor. It would be even sillier to throw a tantrum over a surveillance mission its own intelligence says was accidental. It would be even sillier for the news media of the western world to assist it in doing so.

Sometimes I think United States of American media should abandon its whole "free press" charade and just switch to publishing the news straight out of the Pentagon. This is definitely one of those times!!

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Ah, the Buddha Ms Caitlin speaks the truth!!! - Cousin Lucky