Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/17/23 Kyle Anzalone on the War in Ukraine, the Derailment in Ohio and the Balloon Panic

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

Scott and Kyle Anzalone run through some of the big stories of the day. They start with the war in Ukraine where they discuss how the rhetoric by officials of both sides is evolving. They next discuss the derailment of a train carrying hazardous material in East Palestine Ohio and explore the surprising lack of interest in this story by the legacy media. Finally, they talk about the widespread panic over the Chinese balloon earlier this month and the subsequent shootdowns of several smaller balloons.  Discussed on the show: Russia Warns We Are Closing In On WWIII “Blinken Warns Attempting to Retake Crimea Is a ‘Red Line’ for Putin” (Antiwar.com) “Counting the Dead in Ukraine” (The American Conservative) Ohio Train Derailment & Why the Political Establishment Does Not Care guest Misty Winston “The US May Have Shot Down a Small Hobby Balloon With a Sidewinder Missile” (Antiwar.com) Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there

and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. Hey guys, on the line, I got Kyle Anselone. He is the news editor at the Libertarian Institute and he's the opinion editor at anti-war.com and he writes a bunch of great

stuff every day as well as giving thumbs up and thumbs down on all the great viewpoints we run at anti-war.com. Welcome back to the show. How are you doing, Kyle? Doing great, Scott. Thanks for having me back on. Very happy to have you here. And if you go to Libertarian Institute.org, and it's on the blog at anti-war.com, too, you'll find Kyle's show, Conflicts of Interest, which is co-hosted sometimes by Connor and sometimes by Will, and sometimes by, I don't know, guest co-hosts and sometimes by just Kyle. And it's really good. It's way better than my show. You'd really like it.

And so, well, top headline, Russia warns were closing in on World War III. I don't know. I was told by TV and by expert sources talking to the New York Times that we don't need to worry about that. We can do whatever we want. What do you think, Kyle? No, I think we got two really important statements from high-ranking Russian officials. Labrov, the foreign minister, said that. that the war in Ukraine was nearing the point in no return.

And, you know, he's making this statement as Russia is preparing for a major offensive in Ukraine. And Washington is putting out statements like, well, we'll let him fight for a couple more months. But then we're going to push Kiev to negotiate. Well, you know, depending on how things are going on the ground in Ukraine, Russia may not be so interested in negotiating. I think that's what Lavrov is trying to make clear. Also, the Russian ambassador to the U.N. said that all of Russia's red lines have already been crossed. And so he's, you know, pointed NATO expansion and all the Western military activity right now in Ukraine. Yeah.

Man, so now the implication there is that the Russians will be in a weaker rather than stronger position after a few more months of this or the other way around. Well, I mean, that certainly seems to be the way that this war is going. And we're even now getting signals from the West that all their arms pledges to Ukraine are going to start either drying up or getting tailored back. Germany is saying that while Kiev was pledged two battalions of the Leopardutans, now they're going to struggle to put together a single battalion. And, of course, we know that the 31, the battalion of M1 Abrams, thinks the U.S. said they're going to send to Ukraine, probably won't get there until 24, 24. Additionally, Lloyd Austin, our Secretary of Defense, after the latest Ukraine content group

meeting, this is all the NATO countries getting together talking about Ukraine. Usually they announce more weapons transfers to Ukraine after those meetings. But this time, Austin said that they're actually going to focus on gain Ukraine to use less. ammunition because they're going through more than the Western countries can produce and that's from the NATO Secretary General Jen Stoltenberg Yeah

Man Well and you did have This is on the front page of Antiwar.com right now I guess by Dave Is that even Anthony Blinken said that hey look

Trying for Crimea is a red line He said that in an interview with Politico I guess so that's pretty good that's the first wise thing I've heard him say in a year or more um

is so talk go back to what you said say whatever you want but also add you know go back to what you were also saying about I think that Washington Post story where they were saying well we wanted to fight for another couple of months and then but we want to see him negotiate probably before the summer something like that

go ahead yeah so I was just going to add about the blinking comment there was a recent story from NZZ, which is a Swiss outlet that's a German language paper. It's one of the papers of record in Switzerland. And what that outlet reported was that in the White House, there's a split between Blinken and Austin who kind of want to, I think, you know, start to look at China a little bit more.

And then actually, I think it was Blinking in Sullivan, who wanted to look at China a little bit more. And then Austin, others who want to stay focused on the Ukraine war and really. you see a need to punish Putin over Russia. So maybe this is a little bit of that split shining through. But, yeah, that's that Washington Post story. And Dave wrote this up for anti-war.com earlier this week is, you know, the White House is saying that, oh, we think that they could, Ukraine could gain a little bit more territory. I think they're thinking that Ukraine could get kind of close to not quite maybe the borders pre-Russian invasion, but close to that.

and then they could negotiate, and, you know, hopefully maybe they think they could negotiate that to those borders. But, again, that's not the way the battle lines are currently going in Ukraine. Well, and talk a little bit more about that because I guess there's not a massive hammer blow kind of a thing, but there is a slow and steady escalation now by the Russians into northern Donetsk, especially, right? Right. Yeah, there's a lot of fighting in that particular area, although from my understanding, essentially across the entire line of conflict now in Ukraine, which is quite large. The Russians are either in very defensible positions or they're attacking their Ukrainian

counterparts, which would, I guess, suggest that if a Russian offensive war to come, they would be well prepared for that. Well, I guess, so I'm a little in the dark, and I'm sorry because I've been writing this history book and I'm behind on my current events. That's why you're here. I'm a little confused on the context of the Russians saying they're worried about this thing escalating to a war between themselves and NATO. Is it that they think that or they're claiming that they're doing so well that the Americans are now going to escalate against them? Or they are announcing that they feel like they're being put in a corner where they're going

have to strike, you know, beyond Ukraine into allied states who are supplying them or that kind of thing? Yeah, so I think a lot of the issue for Russia right now and what the ambassador to the UN was referencing was this particular story in the Washington Post where Ukrainian and I think one American official too confirmed that Ukraine is providing Washington with a list of targets in approximate coordinates and then Washington is helping them. you know, confirm the targets or get better coordinates on the targets, and then, you know, Ukraine is using that. And so Russia is saying that at this point, it's a direct war against between the U.S. and Russia with that level of support.

And he even, you know, talked about that Russia does have nuclear weapons. And he says, if you are dealing with a nuclear power and if you are signing the goal of inflicting defeat to this nuclear power, you should have all the options in mind of our possible responses. And so he's, you know, again, Russia is floating a nuclear threat here in response to what the U.S. is doing because they are talking about giving Ukraine longer range missiles here now too with about 100 or 200 mile range. And so Washington is doing the targeting for that. That could lead to some pretty serious strikes. And then, of course, there's also the Nordstrom two pipelines, which both Lavrov and the Russian and to the U.N. made a point to say that there really needs to be more investigation there.

Yeah. Yeah, and calling for the Security Council to investigate it and all of that, escalating that. Yeah, so listen, I mean, the whole thing about the co-belligerent here is so important that, you know, the legal experts, Bruce Fine among them, but many others, too. I mean, in fact, just David Sanger, I don't know exactly how to take this confirmation bias, if you like, but David Sanger in the New York Times just reports as flat fact that America is a co-belligerent in this war.

That, you know, depending, you know, these are all terms of art and categories, you know, subjective categories in people's minds and interpretations of the law by judicial opinion and that kind of thing, right? But, you know, essentially,

if you want to be honest about how the letter of the law reads, that America and NATO are co-belligerents in this war and then we keep finding out, right? That there's more, more intervention even than we thought. They go, well, we're giving them intel, but we're not giving them raw intel. We're just, you know what happens is they'll have some intel

and then we'll confirm it for them, maybe, that kind. And then we find out that's not true, man. We're giving them the straight dope, the best stuff. And in fact, we're going ahead and doing the targeting forum. We're finding out now. We've got CIA and Special Operations Forces on the ground there. and then of course the bazillions of dollars

with the weapons that they poured into over the last year and so under the laws of war even according to the official New York Times version of this thing if they started hitting at say for example arms depots in Poland or whatever

that would be within their right I guess that would be considered a defensive action rather than an offensive one it'd be a huge escalation I'm not recommending it but I'm just saying we've already put them in that position by siding so heavily with their opponent here. According to the lawyers to talk to the times, not our friends at anti-war.com. Right. And you also have a similar comment from the German foreign minister.

And also, I mean, just from Biden last year at this time, he was saying, if we're sending long-range missiles, tains, warplanes to Ukraine, then we're at World War III with Russia. Well, I mean, we're sending long-range missiles. You've pledged to send taint. And it certainly seems like we're about to open up the Pandora's bots and start talking about sending warplanes to Ukraine since the UK has announced they're going to start training Ukrainian pilots on Western Made warplanes. So why would you train them on those warplanes if you don't have intention on transferring those to Kiev in the coming months? Well, you know, I'm trying to come up with a collection of these. Do I ask you to help me with this? I found quite a few where I think it'll be instructed

when we have them all together in a pile where they say well we're boiling the frog we're turning up the heat slowly yes we keep crossing the line but we're not really cross the line we're just moving the line and we're moving it slowly and we're doing and we're getting away with it so far

he hadn't nuked us yet and there's quite a few of those where you know officials say that geez You know, we really thought that Putin might react already, and he hasn't, so now we think maybe we can go a little further. And it's just, it reminds me of being a bad kid sneaking out at night, doing up to no good, and I know it. Well, we got away with this, maybe get away with that. They know that they're doing the wrong thing.

It's against Russia, sitting on a pile of H bombs, acting like they don't know that, or acting like it just can't be that the consequences of their bullshit would blow up right in their face like it always does but again in the future yeah well i i mean we have so many of the same players from the last time it blew up in their face over ukraine uh you know going back to 2014 where you have you know victoria newland now orchestrating i think a lot of the policy in the white house if you look at the seymour shre reporting on the north stream uh bombings you know she's a pretty central player in all of that. And she was also a central player in orchestrating

the 2014 coup. Yep. And I mean, hell, they all admitted it right off the bat. Even Obama himself. Yeah, you know, Crimea, that was a reaction to us, you know, helping to transition the government there. Yeah.

Yeah, it was. Thanks for admitting that, Mr. President. That would have never happened. It was never an issue for 24 years. Well, not the it was never an issue, but they had a deal, a continuing series of deals to maintain their base at Sevastopol there on the Crimean Peninsula. It was never an issue until after the coup government in 2014 threatened to kick them out of there that they decided to seize it, which again,

you know, he even admitted. And it is funny too because I like the fact, I appreciate the fact that in the case of the Newellyn phone call with Pyatt and in the case of the famous Gideon Rose interview on the Colbert report they both talk about yeah we got to hurry we got a midwife it we got to glue it we got to make it stick we got to you know get away with taking Ukraine away from Russia

before Russia can have a chance to react and stop it because they know that like what we're sure our playing with fire here ain't we Stephen Colbert says could they send in troops? And he goes, yeah, they could. Like, we're trying to hope they won't. Yeah, well, about 100,000 people been killed since then, more than that.

I mean, 14 before the war got much worse a year ago. You know, maybe more than 100,000 since then. And, you know, that's them getting away with it. They didn't get away with it. Well, they got away with it, but a whole bunch of other people, you know, had to pay their hell. That's what happened. Yeah, no, I think we are probably talking about well into the hundreds of thousands, especially since 2014 now in Ukraine. There's a pretty good article by Bradley Delvin and the American Conservatives this week, titled Counting the Ukraine War Dead or something along those lines where he goes into like, this is what the Ukraine government says, this is what Russia says, this is what the U.S. says.

And, you know, there's definitely no number that you could point to and say, oh, that one's the right one. But, you know, with all the estimates, you get a good idea that it's definitely well into the hundreds of thousands for Ukraine and in the tens of thousands for Russia at the very least. Yeah, that's really too bad. And you hear fanciful numbers of Russians killed from Ukrainian government sources all the time. But as you say, yeah, it still must be tens of thousands. at the very least you know um yeah um all right well well let's see i have um oh you know what let me ask you about this man this is important it's a little bit offbeat but it is a big deal which is this train derailment and i see that you intervened misty winston our good friend from

the free assange movement about it she must have known a thing or two for you to have her on so i wonder learn there. Yeah, so Misty is a, you know, a citizen and activist in Ohio. So she was, you know, on this story from the very beginning. And I just had her on to kind of talk about, you know, everything that had been going on up until that time. She went through that we have the initial derailment and then authorities decide to set on fire. One of the main chemicals that, you know, we know for sure was a part of, I think, you know, hundreds of thousands of gallons of this particular chemical that's used to make PVC pipes. They know it causes liver cancer and stuff like that. So that was all burned off.

Now, there is some, and, you know, I don't even think just government sources, but people say that, look, if you let this stuff seep into the soil, then the area is ruined forever. So burning it off was kind of the only option at that point. Now, it since come out that those cars, I guess, weren't labeled as hazardous material, and so that led to some of the confusion and some of the problems after the initial derailment that I don't know if authorities really understood what they were dealing with once that derailment happened. But the police ended up saying it on fire. And, of course, you know, then we get the visual images of this, you know, massive cloud of black smoke over, you know, this town. And, of course, the name of the town is East Palestine. The only reason I kind of initially even clicked on the hashtag on Twitter is because I was like, oh, East Palestine, what's happening here? Where's Tel Aviv carrying out another raid? And, you know, here it is actually in Ohio, Middle America, that this really serious event is happening. Now, the EPA and the rail line are saying that, oh, you know, the chemical levels aren't that bad now. I think they offer people like $1,000 who are forced to evacuate their homes. But, you know, If you're looking at the, like all just the independent reporting people who are actually going to the town, you know, people are getting sick.

They have rashes break out. Their eyes are red burning. Their throat is burning. I saw a video of somebody who was, you know, like with the little creek or stream near the incident. And they were showing how when you disturb the water, all of this like, you know, I don't know, it looks like some kind of fuel or oil in the water is coming up. to the top. So there's certainly a lot going on there that needs to be addressed. And it seems that the U.S. government is looking to cover it up and move on from it pretty quickly. Yeah. Sorry. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for Tennessee hot sauce

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You may have seen mine in the background on my bookshelf in some recent interviews. The thing is unbelievable. Check out this incredible piece of art at Rickasali.com slash Ron Paul, and you'll see what I mean. Use promo code Horton and you'll save 25 bucks, and this show will get a little kickback too. That's Rickasali.com slash Ron Paul. And you'll see what I mean. Paul. Cassali is C-A-S-A-L-I, Rick Casali.com slash Ron Paul. And there's free shipping, too. You know, I saw a thing that showed this train coming down some rickety old tracks. And, oh, it was Dan McAdams retweeted. So let's send another billion to Ukraine. And we're showing these just rickety old tracks through Ohio. And they were talking about how it's a miracle that any train can make it from point A to B in Ohio without.

driving off the damn tracks and ruining everything and in fact i think i saw they had another i think it was in ohio that another derailment only this time apparently nothing exploded or anything there's a there's been a couple incidents in the past week there was a derailment i believe in houston in another one somewhere in south carolina or georgia and then there's another incident where i think a tractor trailer carrying some kind of hazardous material overturned in Tucson, Arizona. It looked like it was spewing some very, very

tauts of fumes. It was like a greenish orange color. That was really disturbing. And there's a big plant that burned in Florida, like a five-acre plant, all plastits. So there's a lot of problems in the U.S. and we're sending a lot of money away.

You know, I'm looking for silver linings, man. It's kind of like the Ukraine war saved us from COVID. It wasn't Omicron. Right. It was the Ukraine. It was all the liberal media were finally able to change the subject to the next emergency. It's like, ah, thank goodness.

And I know the liberal media is not going to take this up as too much of a hobby horse, but it seems like when you have this many kind of undeniable catastrophes in a row like this, it really, you know, it's just like, where's the National Guard when Hurricane Katrina's drowned in New Orleans? And everybody knows where the National Guard is. W. Bush has them 7,000 miles away where they are, you know, killing people in Iraq for no good reason. And things like that that break the narrative,

just, you know, events, changing things in a way that, you know, could be beneficial in the sense of like, well, you can hear the speeches now, right? Just like with Dammec Adams quote, when you look at this railway that looks like it was built in the 1940, maybe and last maintained maybe then and while we're waging this world empire our country's

falling apart it just makes it clear it's kind of undeniable and it's not just me i'm an anti-government guy but isn't it clear how little the rulers of this country care about us meaning the very wealthiest corporate chieftains and you know their government that they own up there they don't give a damn about us man and and same for tv you know everybody noticed how little tv was covering this accident but the accident was big enough that everybody knew about it so the cover up just made it worse because it's like geez what's the conflict of interest on every tv channel to keep them from wanting to cover what a sensational story it's got a big fireball and everything you know people love fireballs and still they don't want to sell dish soap

during fireball footage this time it's because they have a conflict of interest and everybody can smell it and everybody can see it and makes it helps i think to undermine confidence in the regime i hope so you know and especially for example in their current foreign policy what are we doing spending all this money on a war east of eastern europe when our own infrastructure is such garbage and everyone knows it, you know? Yeah. Well, you know, something else Misty pointed out on my show was, and this was, I think, more of a Democrat issue, so I didn't pay attention to it, but there was a railway worker strike

over the winter, and Congress and Biden actually forced them back to work without addressing all their safety concerns. And so, you know, she was kind of pointing to that as one of the reasons that we don't see a lot of the Bernie Sanders AOC types really picking up this issue and trying to make a big deal out of it because, you know, they are partly responsible for what happened here, and so they're trying to downplay it. Now, our mutual friend, Recoverdale also had a funny theory that he posted on Twitter, which is that, you know, the mainstream media is so conditioned to ignore the existence of Palestine that even when the Palestine is in middle America, they'll still pretend like it's not happening.

Right. Yeah, I dig that too. Actually, I could see that as sort of being part of it. It does sort of conflict with the narrative, which is that there's no such thing as Palestine, and there never was. So this Palestine, Ohio, why, it must be named after Palestine, Texas, which isn't named after anything. Because otherwise, that's Israel over there, and it always has been. Before that, it was a land without people and not even a name. It was called a Transjordan maybe, you know? It was called the Ottoman Empire, which is such a thin excuse. It's so funny.

And Zionists will say this all the time, too. There never was a nation state called Palestine. Yeah, so? There was an area called that, just because it was under the political domination of one other, you know, far-flung faction or another from time to time doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean anything as far as the rights of the civilian population there to their own land and their own lives. What a joke, but they say that. And so, look, I think there is something to that. We don't want to talk about Palestine this or Palestine that. There's no such thing.

There never was. That's the narrative, and they're sticking to it. Right. I guess you could imagine, too, with the way that search engines work in Twitter search works that, you know, somebody is searching like disaster in Palestine and happens to see some videos of some Arabs getting beaten up to or something. And, you know, that might not play well. Yeah. Well, you know what? In the near-term future, there's a good idea for all the algorithm tweakers over there at Google.

They just make sure that anybody searches up, anybody exploding in Palestine. You just show us this old train wreck from Ohio, this one-off. And we'll forget all about it. I mean, that's a good one. I was kind of thinking about that. There's probably a difference between, like, the long-term Google SEO and, like, the short-term Twitter search boost, where if you scroll through 10, 15 videos on Twitter, you'll probably end up if you just search Palestine,

you'll get one of a natural Palestinian, something happening in Palestine, not, you know, in Ohio, where one term with Google or something, maybe now when you search Palestine, the top three or four results are going to be this, and then you'll finally get into things, you know, happening in Palestine in the Middle East. Yeah.

seriously man all right that shit pisses me off uh we could talk all about that let's not let's talk about the balloons i'm terrified of chinese balloons they could have a emp and and turn out the electricity and then we'll all die and new gingrich will be rich what do you think yeah so i always judged you know when something's real important if i have like a family member or a close friend who gives me a call because they know i'm really into foreign policy stuff even if they don't, you know, know all my actual beliefs. And I saw us on TV. How big of a deal is this?

And I got a couple of those in relation to the balloon story. People are really afraid that the balloon was going to fly over their house and, you know, chemical weapons, biological weapons, a nuclear weapon, an EMP. Something was going to happen with this Chinese balloon that was going to cause a real problem. They don't even know for sure whether we're at war with China or not or what. but this is like what was the conversation the politicians were suggesting that this could be the case and of course how much of a crisis that the Biden administration even allowed this to become by shooting it down with an F-22 I think only confirmed a lot of the bias right where you know if you're if

if it's not a weapon then why did you destroy it with an F-22 right and so that was the first one humiliated, right? Because the Republicans were calling it a weapon or something. But then, I mean, they admit now, right, that they tracked it all the way from the time that it took off. They knew it was a weather balloon all along. And they knew that it was a weather system, as the Chinese said, that blew the balloon, the course it went on. Yeah. So they knew that that wasn't what China meant to do with that balloon.

And so the initial Chinese story that this was a weather balloon, it does seem to be consistent with what has happened. But what about the size of it? Because they say that, nah, the solar panel and the antenna ray on it and whatever was way bigger and different than what you'd expect to see. I mean, maybe China won't really advanced weather balloon. I don't know about all their weather balloon projects and everything like that. They said it had antenna on it.

Oh, antenna. What are they going to do with that? Shoot a ray at you or something? An antenna is for receiving signals. So, you know, Kennedy interrupt. to me, sorry, I'm interrupting you. Can I interrupt to me the other day before I got a chance to say on her show, the worst case scenario

they're like hunting for Chinese dissidents to kidnap and take home the way the Saudis do, right? Something like that. That'd be like the worst thing I could think of that they're trying to do like a dual use thing. There's no reason to think they had sophisticated cameras on them.

You know, they're over Montana so everybody just assumes that they're looking at Minuteman missiles, something like that. But then apparently, if I'm reading the post right for i remember what they said didn't even have cameras on it's had antenna on the bottom of the thing is that correct so that's my understanding now the fbi says they're doing an investigation but they've only recovered part of the balloon anyway so who knows what they're going to turn up and what they're going to say but you know from the very beginning even the pentagon was

saying look you know china has uh satellites that do far more advanced surveillance than this balloon ever could. So whatever they're getting would be redundant and unnecessary, which again, why would China use a surveillance balloon over the United States? I mean, I could see, you know, maybe China testing this over the Philippines are a different country like that. They really want a surveillance balloon. But, you know, they're going to send surveillance balloon over the United States for information that they already have. It just, you know, doesn't make any sense here. And of course, the U.S. used this to taint Todd's Blinken was supposed to go to China the week that that balloon was first spotted over Montana. Of course, you know, that wasn't actually the first time it was

spotted because as you mentioned, they tracked it from the time it was launched to the time it ended up in Montana and all the way to the Atlantic coast where they shot it down. But, you know, Blinken was supposed to go to China and meet with the foreign minister and potentially the Chinese leader and he canceled that trip and then after the u.s shot down the spy balloon austin tried to call the chinese uh foreign uh defense minister and he didn't pick up the hotline phone and then you have eli ratner austin and the rest of the buying foreign policy team going i don't know how we could deal with the chinese they're making this situation so dangerous they won't pick up the hotline phone yeah man what a disaster um you know

know, I'm most interested in the social psychological type aspect of the thing and the unwillingness of the American people to learn to even be the slightest bit skeptical about this stuff. They just come and jerk people's chain. And, you know, even after the first balloon, then it was like, more balloons? Oh, my God. It's the thing. And like, no. You know, it's just zero times five. Still zero. Chill out. And, uh, did, did you see Dave DeGate cams, top story at anti-war.com today. Drunken hobbyists, you know, they call them the beer league of balloon hobbyists, you know, these guys who go and get drunk on a Sunday, you can imagine Hank Hill and the guys getting

into this on an episode, you know, and going, setting some weather balloons up there. I'll tell you what, they go way up there. Yeah, I mean, they could have shot down Bill Do Tree, but I remember that episode where they tie, where Dale ties Bill to the weather balloon. Yeah, dude, he was up there for days of the poor guy. Yeah, but this group is called Nib, right? And, you know, it's just a hobbyist group that gets together. The size of this balloon, Scott, it's not that much bigger than a large birthday balloon that, you know, the $15, $20 ones you would buy for a kid for their birthday at the checkout line at the grocery store.

Like, you know, it's a little bit bigger than that, but not by much. And then at one of these balloons, they fired a sidewinder. missile, a heat-seeking missile at it, but the balloon wasn't hot. You know, I was, I was having a conversation with somebody about this. It's like if you were letting a 13-year-old decide how you were going to shoot down a balloon, they would say, well, what's the most advanced weapon we have? And they say, well, it's a sidewinder missile. And they say, well, that sounds really cool.

Let's do that. Right. But you would assume that if you want to, like, shoot it down in a way that any of it would be salvageable, you would just fire the Gatling gun at it or something. why would you use a missile to hit an object so small? And, of course, the fact that nobody apparently looked at it an infrared to notice it wasn't hot and wouldn't be targeted by the heat-seeking missile. And why would it be hot?

Yeah. And in fact, I read a thing that said they did shoot at it with the machine gun and couldn't hit it. Oh, that's embarrassing, too. Yeah. So it must have been very small. Yeah, what a ridiculous hoax, man. My goodness. But you know, you really could have a word.

You could have, look, with the heightened tensions between. American Russia and America and China right now, you could have some goofball thing like this lead to a real war, you know, because what happens, I mean, you never know exactly what's going on, but everybody's just an emotional individual over there, right? So you, and if you look back at history, you have things where you learn later that when our side did this, their side, Like, for one example, when America did Iraq War I, the Chinese said, whoa, man, look at their missiles can fly down chimneys and in windows and stuff like that. We really need a revolution in military affairs now and started a whole new buildup then. And we didn't really know until later that that was the cause.

That was a major turning point. Someone inside the Chinese military said, we can't let this disparity stand at this ratio. we've got to do something, whereas before they weren't saying that. Or maybe they were saying that, but they weren't winning the argument. And then after H.W. Bush went and had his little adventure playing with his toys in the sand, as Carlin said, then that led to this change of policy in a very substantive and terrible way in China, that kind of thing. That's the same kind of thing here, where, you know, we don't know what conversations are going on behind the scenes in the Kremlin and inside the Russian military establishment inside the PLA about what their posture is compared to the Americans.

I think Putin was just mumbling the other day about, or I guess back in December, about, well, maybe we will change our no first strike posture to, well, sometimes first strike posture if we feel like we have to, which is the American policy. And that wasn't their policy before, but he's like, yeah, I'm having my guys write up a new paper on it right now, you know? these changes are being made so and misunderstandings are likely so it's just such a reckless thing for them to be putting us in this position this way you know and just think about how quickly the American people could be rallied to war especially against China if apparently we shot down

four objects three of which were probably you know American privately launched either research are just recreational balloons, and then one Chinese weather balloon, and the American people are ready to go to war with Beijing over this and believe that they've been attacked, and China was preparing for potentially, you know, a nuclear strike or an EMP strike to disable the entirety of Middle America. I mean, you know, that's the scary part to me. Also, the fact that the U.S. government now is so reactionary, they're going to start firing heat-seeking missiles over American soil at small balloons because of some bad press about a weather balloon that floated over.

I mean, you know, this is really concerning about the political state of America. Seriously. They're lucky they didn't kill a couple of Polish farmers with that misfire, you know? Yeah. Man. All right. Well, listen, if we're not all exploded to death by then, I'll talk to you again soon, Kyle. Thanks very much for your time on the show.

Hell yeah. Thanks for having me on, Scott. you guys. That's the great, Kyle and Salone. Man, he does such great work. I hope you guys to sign up for his podcast and read all he writes in the news section at the Libertarian Institute and check him out also, you know, all that stuff runs also

at anti-war.com, where he is the opinion editor. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA. APSRadio.com. Anti-war.com

Scott Horton.org. libertarian institute.org.