As I was recently passing a neighborhood park on way to the station, I saw children playing with balloons and enjoying running around when few of those colorful inflated rubber objects went out of their hands and started ascending slowly high above the ground - higher and higher, until they went out of sight. You might think of it as an innocent game of children enjoying their golden time of growing up under the careful guidance of parents. But no, running with balloons no longer can be said as an innocent act of children anywhere in the world, since deadly missiles are now ready to target balloons that a group of politicians, who are busy trying to control everything in our life, are waging war against such flying objects and the thought police of our crazy days, the influential international media, are telling us endlessly that balloons are no longer innocent tools for children entertainment, but deadly weapons of surveillance not only targeting to destroy our gardens of desire, but also posing a serious threat even to our survival. Hence, be aware of balloons! And never again allow kids to play with such innocent-looking deadly tools of espionage.

The world is going crazy and all of a sudden there is no end of news pouring in about balloons being used as deadly weapons in disguise that need to be destroyed and banished. Some even are telling about balloons being sent by aliens to watch over all our movements for the preparation of an all-out assault against the human race. So, what do we need to do in such a crazy period of suspecting everything as being objects that our enemy has been using to harm us? If we listen to what the supreme authorities of the media world, the so-called elites are telling us to do, we might simply go crazy by seizing to do anything meaningful; be it innocent enjoyment of children, or be it keeping an eye on weather condition by releasing high-flying balloons to look for cloud formation resulting in storm and cyclone. The world has all of a sudden become such a sharply divided entity that we are probably even casting suspicious eyes on smiling faces of others, thinking something sinister is definitely hidden behind such smiles.

It all started when the US authorities declared that they have detected a high-flying balloon over the sky of security-sensitive regions in some of the states. And right before that there had been a bomb-shelling news of the carefully planned destruction of the Nord-Stram pipeline running under the Baltic Sea for providing gas supply to Germany from Russia. A much well-known and widely respected award-winning American journalist Seymore Hersh in his in-depth investigative reporting revealed that the Nord-Stream explosion was a carefully prepared operation executed under the supervision of US intelligence services. The act, if ultimately proven to be the one that Seymore Hersh had pointed out, would have been extremely harmful to the US authorities as such acts are classified nothing more than state terrorism. Hence there had been a need to create a media fuss about something that might turn out to be even more sensational than the Nord-Stram revelation. And here comes the weather balloon released long back by Chinese authorities that went off track and kept on drifting slowly around the world.

It should also be noted that soon after the news of the detected balloon was publicized, a number of countries came forward with evidences that such balloons were seen above their sky limits as well. This resulted in the blame game of international perspective, well enough to suppress and silent the news that Seymore Harsh had disclosed. So, the purpose had already been served and to make the allegation more authentic and more suspense-filled, the US authorities also revealed that three other flying objects were also shot down over the sky of North America, revealing at the same time that those might had been objects sent by aliens to spy on us. This immediately created a more suspense and tense atmosphere, as flying saucer hunters around the globe getting involved in debates over what we should do to counter such cosmic threats coming from the galaxy. At the same time, the balloon saga did not remain confined within the United States. East Asia too started sounding alarms that Chinese are regularly sending balloons to spy on countries Beijing sees as hostile. And a new war of words between Japan and China eventually resulted in verbal back lashes between high officials of two countries.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, meeting China's foreign policy chief Wang Yi in Munich last week, conveyed his concern over suspected Chinese balloons violating Japan's airspace and said that Tokyo considers such act as an intrusion. In reply, Wang harshly criticized Japan for following Washington's lead by making up stories to criticize and attack China without providing clear evidence. Japanese government later said that three unidentified flying objects were spotted flying within the country's airspace in three years since 2019 are suspected to have been Chinese spy balloons.

Japan's existing defense guidelines do not address properly issues related to balloons flying over country's air space. As a result, the ambiguity raised concern that Chinese surveillance balloons might continue their mission over Japan and collect sensitive information that they would like to use later. This prompted the government to take a hurried decision for easing rules of weapon use by Japan's self-defense forces. Japanese leadership now can have a sound sleep as balloons too have been classified as flying objects that can be shot down using high precision weaponry.

As for whether children would be advised to refrain from playing with balloons, no instruction has yet been given. However, this might come sooner or later, depending on the eventual outcome of war of words between United States and China over the drifting balloons.

Tokyo, February 21, 2023