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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (196333)	2/14/2023 8:08:46 PM
From: Maurice Winn	2 Recommendations Recommended By marcher Pogeu Mahone Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 217542

The balloons business is hilarious. The main serious thing it shows is how out of their tiny minds so many are. Mass hysteria is very popular. See covid. See the vaxx mania. See Ukraine MAD frenzy. WMDs panic 20 years ago. If China, or anyone, launches loads of balloons, it would be understandable. People like fun. Writing on it "Made in China" would be a fun taunt. "Russia Russia Russia" on another. "DO NOT DISTURB = contains white powder" on another. "MAGA" on another. Mqurice

To: TobagoJack who wrote (196333)	2/14/2023 9:23:38 PM
From: David	1 Recommendation Recommended By marcher Respond to of 217542

Welding Dust is a friend.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (196333)	2/16/2023 12:16:39 AM
From: sense	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 217542

China threatens to punish the US for shooting down its spy balloon that floated past sensitive military sites before a jet shot it out of the sky U.S. Flew More Than 10 High-Altitude Balloons Over Our Airspace: China LOL !!! I don't know why it is... but the Chinese officialdom are just such terrible liars. Probably has something to do with not ever feeling they have any need, in China, for the "relevant authorities" to come across as believable... or to adopt a posture acknowledging and addressing the public's legitimate concerns, or rights... given they refuse to acknowledge any... and given the ability, as you see at Twitter, Google and "the MSM"... now trying to do the same here... to simply dictate what opinion and reactions will be, by banning those they don't want. That appears to result in frequent Chinese failures to understand how their communications... much less their actions... are likely to be received... and, an obvious failure to understand who the audience(s) are that they are addressing, and how they are likely to interpret what is said, and what they do. You get the clear impression they don't really care, anyway... and are "going through the motions" with a focus on a different audience, entirely. China's first "effort"... consists of a series of obviously specious or conflicting claims about "what happened"... much of which clearly equates to throwing a bit of everything they could think of up against the wall to see what bits of it might stick. Maybe that works, in China ? Here... that just makes it blatantly obvious... with the skill set of a six year old boy trying to justify the raid on the cookie jar with a series of made up excuses... Then, that ridiculous effort clearly failing to result in "throttling back" the reaction they've created... rather amplifying it instead... they shift from "acknowledgement," "explanations" and "regret"... to making threats ? And then, another view of China's "shifting" story... China goes on the spy-balloon offensive Yeah. That's gonna go over well... (like a lead balloon ?) Surely they have to have people capable of telling them how their BS is going to be received, here ? Apparently... they'd rather just blunder ahead... assuming Americans will just have to respond to them the same way Chinese might ? That not working, either... so, they proceed to deflection based in trying to blame you for what they did ? LOL !!! Not that U.S. officials are handling it much better... while generating more questions than answers about their own performance in addressing the issue... or their lack of performance... with what the public consider to be an appropriate level of concern, and an appropriate response. What we see thus far looks exactly like the same guy responsible for massively screwing up the withdrawal from Afghanistan... is being left to manage our national defense without any adult supervision. So, anyone with half a brain... should expect there might be a tendency to "over-reaction"... as China calls it ? The hidden truth behind China’s spy balloons "Pentagon, State Department and NSC all keen to downplay China’s overflights as specter of a ‘deep state’ deal rises" It's just as clear that while U.S. officials aren't lying, in the way China's are... they also aren't close to telling the whole truth... about what they know... when they knew it... and what it means... all while deliberately downplaying the risks... which naturally results in the vacuum thus left being filled in with curious people making an effort to "find out more"... while presenting bits of what they find... The Intel types (if you can believe them) saying they KNEW about this already back during Trump's tenure ? First impression: maybe they're lying about that, intending to "share" and thus deflect blame away from Biden for his weak response... but, that "lie" then also suggests they (Mattis being named) knowingly withheld the information from Trump "because afraid of an over-reaction"... essentially confirming they'd been conducting a "silent coup" intending to deny and co-opt the President's power... and deny him access to the information he needed to do his job... the voters be damned... and the Constitution ? But, yeah... the last election was "all good" and "squeaky clean"... except, proven not... ? And, the braindead empty suit they selected to occupy the office now... suits them just fine ? China might well have been knowingly conducting an independent diplomatic relationship with these un-elected leaders... whether in DoD or State and the Intel community... the "cabal" en masse... expecting that would "work" to advantage them ? There's clearly much that doesn't add up, yet... and, given proofs in recent history, that's not the least rational conclusion one might draw from what is known... both about the Chinese, the American and "deep state" interest, and their conflicting agendas that, in the U.S., clearly are separate from those of legitimate leadership... and from the legitimacy of elections and adherence to Constitutions. Clear, too, well before this latest failure in leadership... that Biden's been being set up for a decapitation by his own team, soon, anyway... D's probably hoping to get rid of him before the Hunter investigation, or others, goes too far... requiring an impeachment. They would much rather throw him under the bus and be done with it, well before such things start cutting too deep and exposing how totally corrupt they are. Support of Biden by the Democrats... currently, before this latest set of events, said to be down to 12%... "Duck and Cover"... is what you see in result in the Congress, now... given a better ability to read the mood of the electorate... while not thinking "it doesn't matter"... House Unanimously Approves Resolution Condemning China for Spy Balloon Interestingly, there's still very little information being provided to the public on the real nature of the "balloon"... with the very little there is being treated as a state secret, still... as "you don't have a need to know"... when, that's so not going to fly... So they're falling back to providing only grossly over-simplified and dumbed down content... without being specific about the exact capabilities they clearly know about... But, they're also no longer willing to avoid saying anything... can't pretend they don't know... or haven't figured it out yet. So, yeah, the ridiculous ruse that its not a spying platform... makes China's leadership look like incompetent and cartoonish cut-outs... caught bringing a spy balloon to a dogfight... and thinking it wouldn't matter ? And, now, dribbling out a bit more information, the U.S. saying China has deployed similar provocation machines intent on violating the sovereignty and air space... and doing who knows what else... to at least 40 other nations on 5 continents ? And China's clever new response is "I know you are, but what am I" ? Today, I noted... the U.S. are finally saying it was well equipped with spy cameras and communications gear designed to function in "sig-int" collection... capturing radio communications and locating their sources... Yeah. Go figure. That's still saying almost nothing about the actual nature of its capabilities... much less the nature of the risks it might represent... And, still a cone of silence over the risks imposed by other, similar, systems that appear to have already "delivered their payloads"... the balloons located and shot down only after having done so... which had arrays of strings left dangling ? What "shoe" did they drop, and where did they drop it ? The size of the larger balloon and the "gear" though... is clearly apparent in the pictures we have... And, from the size of the balloon... you can compute the volume, the lifting potential of the lighter than air gasses used... and thus the potential weight of the payload it was capable of carrying... For comparison... the U.S. airspace rules limit the payload on actual weather balloons to 12 pounds... the payload capacity on the Chinese spy balloon... looks like it could be as as much as 7,000 lbs. The array underneath the balloon... is also easy to measure to determine its size. And, from the area in the solar panels attached to it... easy enough to compute the power output... depending on the panels used... which could range from ~ 4.6 up to ~ 7.0 kilowatts... "Leaks" from people briefed... have stated that the device was not "unguided"... but, as should be obvious... was fully capable of controlling its direction by controlling its altitude while seeking the steering winds desired. But, the system is said to have gone beyond that, and contained a "self propelled" capability to fly against the wind, change direction, reverse its course, etc. I have no way of independently verifying that... but it appears perfectly consistent with the "selected" flight path relative to the winds... Why wouldn't they shoot it down ? Some are speculating about the "deep state deal" that suggests being done to allow China to spy ? And, if so, and done secretly, the political fallout from that could be.... hugely transformational... Others suggest its capabilities were well enough known that it didn't represent any real threat... suggesting some "Spy vs. Spy" elements in gamesmanship... and, whenever you get near that rabbit hole... give it up... there's never going to be any delicious rabbits in the bottom of that hole getting caught because of public debate about them. But, its also... a distraction from what matters more... Lots of discussion about "why bother" with a balloon, when satellites are perfectly capable... not many good answers offered... but, easy enough. Satellites have limited capabilities (the Chinese more limited than ours, in all likelihood) and they are mostly extremely predictable... making it pretty easy to hide from them. Balloons, more like large scale spy drones... and on this scale they are likely not much different in capability... introduce long loiter times and maneuverability... that might enable "surprising" an unaware opponent, into revealing some hidden capability... But, that's not the limit of the utility of such systems, of course... With sensors and communications, like those this platform seems it had... they can also be used in real time targeting of weapons... as U.S. drones deployed in combat routinely will do in "tactical" situations... Would China get upset... if we had Global Hawks or other long range, long residence time systems, loitering casually over a string of their key strategic defense facilities ? And, in that context, you have to consider other risks, in proper context. Last year, with Russia preparing to attack Ukraine, while denying they would... and China beating war drums while clearly preparing to attack Taiwan, and constantly threatening to do so, claiming that as "their right" ? Right before Putin launched his attempted takeover of Ukraine... China and Russia met and signed an "unlimited" mutual defense pact... During / after the Cold War... We USED to have an "Open Skies" agreement with Russia... where we each flew airplanes over the other's facilities... to mutually verify there was nothing threatening going on. But, Russia unilaterally terminated our rights under that agreement a long time ago... limiting our ability to conduct the operation successfully, while they continued doing so, unfettered. So, we withdrew from it in 2020, terminating their rights... and, then, they withdrew in 2021... "citing the U.S. withdrawal and the inability of member nations to guarantee that information gathered would not be shared with the U.S." So, given changes in both weapons and "the situation" in that period... its a VERY real concern that China might well have been coordinating their efforts, and cooperating with Russia... or others... in an effort to enable real time weapons targeting... to enable a strategic first strike on America's primary strategic deterrent capabilities... Maybe that would be less of a concern... if Putin (as Kim Jong Un) weren't constantly threatening pretty much exactly that ? Even the schtick that "It's just a weather balloon"... failing in feigning ignorance... while rather deliberately missing the point that the weather is a huge variable in the probable accuracy, and thus likely success, of any weapons planned to be delivered by ICBM at global or cross-continental ranges... only the more true in the case of hyper-sonics or other re-entry vehicles expending energy while maneuvering in the atmosphere... So... yeah... China’s Balloon Could Be America’s Awakening An alarming blunder may convince the U.S. public to take Beijing’s threats seriously.