 Hello and welcome to Daily Debrief brought to you by People's Dispatch. I am Pragya. Is paranoia gripping the United States? It has shot at three more unidentified objects in the sky. Or are the missiles a distraction from recent revelations? Next at the Arab League Conference in support of Jerusalem in Cairo on Sunday, solidarity for Palestine from prominent participants. What else to expect from this meeting and the circumstances it is being held in? After the Met Balloon from China, it shot down on February 6th, US Missiles have brought down three more objects in Alaska, Central Yukon in Canada and over Lake Hurion on the Canada-US border. These were on the 10th, 11th and 12th of February. The US military has said one object was cylindrical, the other octagonal. But there's no other sign of identifying or revealing what these objects were. So what explains this shooting spree? We go over to Praveer Pulkaster. Okay Praveer, thanks very much for joining us. Praveer, I've been wondering, is the United States just being paranoid over here, shooting objects down from the sky one after the other? Well, it's interesting. The first one was at least large. The others are supposed to be a size of maybe a truck or two trucks, maybe a car. We don't know. They seem to be rather small to therefore go off in this shooting spree, not shooting from the hip but shooting from the air, is rather strange for a country of the US size. And after all, the US has a long history of surveillance in other countries. In fact, the U2, which went above almost 60,000 feet, was also an attempt to overfly Russian territory in the belief that the Soviets at the time would not have the ability to bring it down, which unfortunately for Russia, for the United States, they did. But, you know, leaving that out, the question is why the sudden bout of balloon shooting, popping of balloons, we used to do it in birthdays and so on as children, but leaving that out, why is the United States doing it? So one of it is paranoia, as you were saying. Other part of it could be just trying to distract what is happening elsewhere. And in that, is it a sort of response to say more Hershey's expose of the North Sea, blowing up the Nord Stream, two pipes, just one and two pipelines? Is it in order to distract attention from that? I really don't know which way the US goes. But it is also interesting to see the response of the United States mainstream media, which has bought this, shall we say, this narrative, hook, line and sinker, and they're going on and on about how this Chinese balloons, how dangerous they are to the sovereignty of the United States and how dangerous they are in terms of surveillance capabilities and so on. So it doesn't seem a natural response, particularly now the three other very small, whatever they are. They're not being defined as balloons either. They're being defined as something there, unidentified flying objects if we will. So we are back to UFOs at the moment. So what is being shot down over Canada, over Alaska is not even clear to us. So given all of this, there is a combination of paranoia, a combination of historia, and maybe it's a plain and simple distraction trying to take our eyes off what should be the much bigger story, which is who really sabotages the Nord Stream one and two gas pipelines. And I think that is something much more of strategic importance to the world. And the fact that the mainstream media is now, at least in the United States, and the global media more or less follows this has got completely stuck into the Chinese balloon story. But we don't even know who are the other who whose balloons are the three are. In fact, there is a good possibility they are really weather balloons from Alaska, which have been sort of and drift. You see, whether balloons have this property that they are supposed to go up above a certain height and then explode. That's the nature so that they don't are not there wandering ministries in the sky forever. And sometimes this mechanism fades. And then it sort of is adrift in it, you know, at some point it comes down. Now that's what happens in weather balloons and when it does, then we have seen it in India also, there's a bit of a human crime and suddenly a balloon comes down, because that's not what it is supposed to end its life on, on the surface of the earth. Therefore, this is a bit of an anomaly. And yes, once in a while it happens. But I've never seen this kind of hysteria over unidentified flying objects, if you will, which are really balloons and which need F 22s and F 35s to go and shoot them down. By the way, we must also register in completely new fact, something which is completely unique. F 22, one of the most advanced aircraft made by the United States has made its first kill. The Chinese surveillance balloon as the United States would call it, what Chinese have said is a bit logical balloon. This is the Raptor F 22 Raptors first kill. So we have at least one thing that the F 22s have done, dropped down at least a balloon. Right, Praveer. Praveer, is there a surveillance angle over here, which is worth looking at? Well, I wouldn't say the surveillance angle, if it is there, is something which the US has also done and is actually planning to do. There is in fact an article which has appeared sometime back, which talks about the US, about inflatables. And inflatables are of course balloons. Right. Balloons of inflatables for surveillance purposes, strategic monitoring purposes, and they are supposed to be between 60,000 to 90,000 feet. And it is not tethered balloons. Earlier they were using balloons, but they were tethered. They were not flying free. So this talks about untethered balloons and they will be flying between 60,000 to 90,000 feet. So they are supposed to be experimenting with that. They were planning to do it. Had the Chinese beaten them to it, we don't know. But I think the interesting part of it, the ceiling that they talked about is between 60,000 to 90,000 feet. Now this range, this is interesting as a range because this is not clear that actually it is the airspace of any specific country. Where does the vertical airspace of a country, where does it end, is something which is not settled in international law. I think we talked about it earlier as well. It's not settled in international law. In fact, it doesn't exist in international law at all. We know that the low earth orbits or anything about 100 kilometers, we take it for granted. It's a spacecraft because there is no atmosphere, enough atmosphere to be able to lift, provide the lift, which an aircraft does, which an aircraft uses. Therefore, from an aircraft, craft, it has to become a spacecraft. So that has been thought of as the dividing line. And this is known in literature as the Von Karman line. So that's how after somebody who defined it first, supposed to be 84 kilometers. But for convenience, Von Karman said, let us make it as 100. So we'll remember it more easily. So that is, supposedly, one possible line we could use, but nobody's accepted it. So anything between 60,000 feet, anything above 60,000 feet is conceivably, as of now, completely undefined space. Below 60,000 feet, has it been defined? No. But by convention, you can say, okay, my airspace control extends up to 60,000 feet. Could be argued. But again, there is no law on it. But if we accept that, above 60,000 feet, definitely there is free for all. So this balloon, the one, the Chinese balloon over which the whole Hala balloon started, that was above 60,000 feet. The rest we don't know. We're not getting much information about it. But by all accounts, given the size, they look to be weather balloons really. Right, Praveer. Praveer, are there wider implications to sort of watch out for if they continue shooting objects down from the sky? Well, I hope they won't shoot an aircraft down from the sky. I do not think they have the problem with a Superman flying in outer space. We might have bring down the Superman flying there too. So if we leave these possibilities out, then we are really looking at possibly bringing down each other's weather balloons are probably even our own weather balloons, thinking it might be something which is somebody else's surveillance balloons. In fact, one of the balloons that they seem to have shot down, it's quite possible it was a balloon which got away and didn't go up as it was meant to after which it because of the air pressure inside, it actually explodes. And therefore, it's sort of, then it of course, it's debris come down, but the debris are very small. So it does really make a difference. That's what I said, all of the air balloons tasks. Can it be used for surveillance purposes? Of course. Can it lead to a major incident between countries? We already have seen that happening with the Chinese surveillance balloons. Is there an international law issue here? Yes. I think we should start negotiating what is the upper floor of what would be considered of international space and where your air space ends, the vertical limit. So the vertical limit to sovereignty is I think an important issue, which needs to be brought into discussion, but not in this way that the way that we are talking about is really paranoia or distraction, whichever way you want to call it. It has no strategic significance because as we have discussed earlier, given the kind of satellites we have, the kind of instruments we have abroad satellites, we can detect carbon dioxide in exoplanets for God's sake. And then we are talking about being scared of balloon surveillance. It sounds very, very paranoid if you will, or it has other dimensions which you are completely unaware of. And as I said, my guess is as good as anybody else's, I guess, that this is only to distract from the fact that Saibor Hirsch's article has really been something which has been eye-opener for a lot of people. And he's not just any other journalist. He has credibility of a long history of his acts that he has done. Journalistic scoops that he has had from my life to Abu Khareem and so on. Given all of that, for me, it seems a distraction, but it could be just hysteria. It could be anything. I have no explanation to offer that I can really give Pragya that you or any viewer would not have. Right, Prabir. Thanks a lot for joining us. The special conference on Jerusalem held in Cairo on Sunday opened to condemnations of Israel's violent occupation of Palestine. Mahmoud Abbas, President of Palestine, backed the two-state solution again. But importantly, he demanded for Palestine full membership of the United Nations as Israel plunges Palestinians deeper into a crisis of violence and oppression. What can this conference achieve? Let us ask Abdul, who has been covering the region for people's dispatch. Abdul, can you tell us what this special meeting is all about? Basically, last year in November, Arab League had a summit and in which they had basically laid out a plan of action about building Jerusalem as a frontline of resistance against the occupation in Israel, sorry, by Israel in Palestine. And this conference was basically organized in that scheme of things. So on Sunday, most of the Arab leaders, of course, attended by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian president and the king of Jordan, along with other leaders, had basically came together to talk about the ways through which this can be done. The Jerusalem can be developed as a frontline of resistance, particularly given the fact that it has been under attack. All the speakers in the conference talked about how Jerusalem has been under attack from the Israeli occupation. There is a greater attempt to judise it, make it more basically changes Arab character through various what we call the creating facts on the ground, demolishing the Palestinian settlements, building illegal settlements, attacking the Alaska Mosque again and again, even by the leaders of the present government and so on and so forth. Apart from that, it also discussed in detail about the increased kind of escalation which Palestinians have witnessed in terms of violence from the occupation side, the increasing rates all across the occupied territories in which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in last two years at least and this year also and the numbers of killed have increased. So what are the ways through which this can be resistance in which the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas asserted once again that they believed into state solution and only way the two state solution can be saved in the context of the increased assault from Israel on this particular solution of the Palestinian question is to basically seek full membership of Palestine in the UN. UN as we all know Palestine is not a full member. It has an observer's observation, observer status and Palestinians have demanded full membership. So that is considered to be one of the main strategies apart from continuing the campaign on different international for us about the Palestinian cause. Right, Abdul. Abdul, now there have been a series of meetings, these summit also meets annually and these kind of condemnations are issued. To what extent is the UN full membership? How would it unfold in the sense to help Palestine? Yeah, it's difficult to say at this moment. Given the fact that in the Security Council there is US which basically opposed to any such move, it is considered to be very pro-Israeli and there is even if the other countries agree, if the US vetoes that will, this will not happen. So it depends on how the diplomacy works out and how the US reacts to it. As far as the ground situation is concerned, whether these summits, these conferences are really helping in any way Palestinians, that seems to be under a question mark. Primarily if you see in last few months as I said earlier, the number of violent activities against Palestinians has increased many fold. Primarily after this ultra-right wing, some say also the racist government has come to power in Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu with the support of Itamar Ben-Guil. Yesterday or day before yesterday, there was Israeli cabinet meeting in which they talked about how there will be further repressions of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem in particular, apart from the measures they have taken in occupied West Bank. There was an airstrike on Gaza yesterday. More than nine illegal outposts have been legalized by the Israeli government yesterday in the cabinet meeting and the Interior Ministry headed by Ben-Guil has ordered more demolitions of houses inside the occupied East Jerusalem and restrictions on the movement of Palestinians inside the city. All these are justified according to the Israeli government as a response to what they call the increasing terrorist activities from the Palestinian side, which basically is an attempt, a very baseless attempt to justify their increased attempts to basically grab as much Palestinian land as possible and people will resist it and that resistance is called terrorism. So just to summarize the point, despite the fact that there is a greater response to the Palestinian concerns in terms of meetings and resolutions and statements coming from different international organizations including the Arab League, but some of its own members are not committed to the Palestinian cause anymore. They have quote unquote normalized the relationship with Israel and when it comes to other practical measures to protect the Palestinian interest, there is hardly anything visible. Alright, Abdul. Thanks a lot for joining us. And that is all we have for you today. Thank you for watching Daily Debrief. To come back to us tomorrow, you can find more such stories on our website, peoplesdispatch.org and our regular updates are on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.