This whole fuss about the balloon

[Grudge]

Did you know the Pentagon was doing it anyway to spy on Americans and beyond?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ce-midwest

[jawn galliano]

the whole thing is absurd. opportunistic propaganda from china hawks to scuttle the blinken-xi meeting. weather balloon gets blown off course, the wrong people pick up on it, and it gets blown up into an international incident. the american people buy it without a second thought, as usual. and biden feels compelled to act to appease those very same china hawks, to avoid looking "weak on china". what a fucking joke

"spy balloon omg!!!!" guys, they have satellites for that kind of thing, and those collect much better intel. get a fucking grip

[Mesarthim]

Yeah BUT that ballon might be carrying Covid (which is a Chinese bioweapon but also isn’t that big of a deal!) in its payload and we need to shoot it down! Oh we did shoot
It down? Well why didn’t we do it sooner? What do you mean they also pulled this during the turnip administration and we did nothing then too? Testing our response times and choosing not to act just to fake them out? What a load of bullshit! Hurr durr Biden is weak!


But for real, even if it was a spy ballon who the fuck cares. Every major player in the world engages in shit like this. They know that we know it’s there and what data it’s collecting, just as they probably know when we engage in shit like this too.

[Noyka]

Known or not its still bold to do. They have been doing it to everyone with no consequences. I think shooting it down was correct but they acted way to slow.

[Ninny]

3600 dead in Turkey and Syria

[Ninny]

In unrelated news

[jawn galliano]

there's nothing bold about it, it's a weather balloon. weather balloons are not vehicles that you can tell where to go, they go where the wind takes them.

[Noyka]

“Weather”

[Methuselah Honeysuckle]

3600 dead in Turkey and Syria

From a weather ballon attack?

[slugbait]

[jawn galliano]

3600 dead in Turkey and Syria

From a weather ballon attack?

its not just any weather balloon... its a chinese weather balloon

[Noyka]

Two points:

1: you can acknowledge the horrific loss of life and destructioj while still acknowledging this balloon mattered.

2: blown by the wind yet it hovered including over nuclear silos. Whatever the reason this was china poking at the us. I do not want war with china but they are no fellating lover.

[slugbait]

[Svartmetall]

Gave the GQP something to howl and gibber about in order to distract from the fact that it just came out that Biden had created more than twice as many jobs in his first 2 years as bag of diarrhea inside another, bigger bag of diarrhea did (11.7 million to 4.5 million)...all the while ignoring that bag of diarrhea inside another, bigger bag of diarrhea didn't do shit about the (at least) 3 Chinese 'weather' balloons that roamed over ths US while he was squatting in the White House

[Corpsepyre]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/09/us/p ... ticleShare

The United States used high resolution imagery from U-2 flybys to determine the balloon’s capabilities, the department said in a written announcement, adding that the balloon’s equipment “was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons.”

The agency said the balloon had multiple antennas in an array that was “likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications.” Solar panels on the machine were large enough to produce power to operate “multiple active intelligence collection sensors,” the department said.

The agency also said the U.S. government was “confident” that the company that made the balloon had direct commercial ties with the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military, citing an official procurement portal for the army. The department did not name the company.

Shocked this didn't turn out to be a weather balloon. Utterly shocked, I say.

[jawn galliano]

hmm wonder why they use all these qualifiers and nebulous phrasings such as "likely capable of" and "active intelligence collection". probably nothing to it. the one thing we can definitely be certain of though, is that the US state department, the pentagon, and US intelligence and political security agencies would never lie, obfuscate, stretch the truth, or do anything untoward when it comes to disseminating information about officially-designated enemy countries with which it is trying to go to war.



pic unrelated, sorry, sorry, t rying to delete,,

[jawn galliano]

to state the obvious, i am not immune to the notion that there might be some other function or purpose to these devices. but because i have a marginally functioning memory, i require a higher standard of evidence than "the state department says so!" before i am willing to entertain those claims.

[Corpsepyre]

You're breaking my heart, Jawn.

[slugbait]

It was balloonenstein

[Verbal]

i hate balloons

[jawn galliano]

fuck balloons

all my homies hate balloons

[Olden Polynice]

Is this about currency and power or weather balloons? Or is this the George Bush Snr thing? Is NDMG still lurking? We need you're insights.

[Dr. Gonzo]

I think they people have aright to know what the balloons are for and why they are floating around. The powers that be need to find some answers.

[Noyka]

It’s totally not china spying no it’s aliens 1000% aliens

[Mesarthim]

Relevant.

[Verbal]

isnt relevant that movie where dicaprio fucked a bear

[zim]

no that's revenant, a 1999 action-roleplaying pc game

[Noyka]

Due to a song folks on the internet are saying metallica can predict the future

[jawn galliano]

https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/ ... -down-usaf

lol, lmao

[Methuselah Honeysuckle]

:doubleoldroflcopter:

[zim]

balloon.png