Starlink Becoming a Military Target in the SMO

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX, providing satellite Internet access coverage to over 50 countries. It also aims for global mobile phone service after 2023. SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019.

As of February 2023, Starlink consists of over 3,580 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), which communicate with designated ground transceivers. In total, nearly 12,000 satellites are planned to be deployed, with a possible later extension to 42,000. SpaceX announced reaching more than one million subscribers in December 2022.

This service was most notably used during the Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, as Russian attacks brought widespread degradation of the telecommunications network.

During the battle of Mariupol (2022), Starlink was used to report on the worsening conditions inside the city.

As of 5 April 2022, SpaceX and USAID had delivered 5,000 terminals to Ukraine, of which SpaceX had donated 3,667 or 73%, and the rest had been purchased by USAID.

SpaceX had been negotiating with Ukraine for the launch of Starlink a month and a half before the invasion, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said. According to her, SpaceX was waiting for an official letter with permission.

At the beginning of the surprise Russian’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and as Russia attacked key infrastructures including telecommunication ones, Ukraine experienced significant problems with Internet access. Maintaining internet access was seen as a priority by Ukraine’s military and other government bodies.

Now come reports Ukraine’s forces are employing Starlink to launch chemical weapons on Russian Federation forces in violation of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction (Chemical Weapons Convention or CWC).

The CSC treaty entered into force on 29 April 1997, and prohibits the large-scale use, development, production, stockpiling and transfer of chemical weapons and their precursors, except for very limited purposes (research, medical, pharmaceutical or protective). The main obligation of member states under the convention is to effect this prohibition, as well as the destruction of all current chemical weapons. All destruction activities must take place under OPCW verification.

The US and Russia both entered the CWC in 1997.

Tom Luongo and The Duran on The Fed-Davos War – Short BlackRock Edition

Tom Luongo and The Duran

Or, if you want the condensed version, here’s Mark Wauck with his summary: https://meaninginhistory.substack.com/p/more-on-the-fed-davos-war

Alex Mercouris starts it off by asking two questions:

Is this banking crisis serious? and

Where is the weakness–in Europe or in the US?

Luongo:

It’s not so much one or the other, it’s the question of relative vulnerability.

The great game of global capital is that capital flows to where it’s treated best. We have a great global divide. The Eurasian bloc is trying to get out from under King Dollar hegemony. That is putting pressure on the collective West, which wants to extend that hegemony.

The question then becomes: Do we have grownups on the Western side of the divide who recognize the changed reality of world economics (and thus of monetary systems) and are willing to come to terms with it? TL thinks those grownups are in the Fed and the NY money center banks–they can see the problem. If they didn’t see the problem they would have backed staying at the zero bound, pumping up the shadow banking system to infinity, and keep the party going.

The other faction in the West is the Davos group in Europe, who absolutely want to unmoore money from all opportunity costs to create new monetary units, i.e., Central Bank Digital Currencies–digital scrip–that can be used to maintain all economic activity under centralized technocratic control. So the West is divided.

Once you identify that divide, it’s relatively simple to watch responses to it. The pressure from Eurasia, rapidly moving toward integrated trade on a multi currency basis, is that they’re also building gold into the foundation, to keep everyone honest. This is why the Fed is acting the way it is, and why the NY banks are saying, in effect: We don’t have any other option except to back off and retrench, because if we don’t … Eurasia will tie everything to gold, they’ll sell our treasuries, and they’ll collapse our banking system. And there’s nothing we can do about it. They can survive a disorderly unwind, we cannot. Why? Because they have an energy surplus and a commodity surplus, and the gold is flowing from West to East. In the big picture, that’s what this is about.

The collective West’s response is to launch a war on Russia and threaten war with China.

Now, looking at the three big areas of the world, who has the weakest hand? Clearly Europe. Europe will fight, tooth and nail, but at the end of the day Eurasia and the US hold most of the cards. The Fed is able to print more dollars but only allow them to circulate domestically, which will shore up the US banking system relative to Europe.

This doesn’t mean that the US will skate and Europe will get trashed. It’s all a big poop sandwich. We all have to take a bite, the question is: Who has to take the biggest bite?

On to Credit Suisse. This is the most misunderstood part of the whole thing. It’s necessary to understand that Europe doesn’t really have anything like the FDIC. That means the US can use the FDIC as a weapon against Europe. In the same way Europe doesn’t have a singular bond market, which is why the Euro is a fundamentally weaker currency than the dollar. This means that there can’t be an integrated policy response to a depositor bank run in Europe.

In the US what’s happening is different than in the past. There is an implicit guarantee that all insurable deposits–those that already qualify for FDIC insurance–will be backstopped to infinity. And, by the terms of the Bank Term Funding Program, if the FDIC runs out of money they will tax the big banks to cover the shortfall. That’s the exact opposite of what happened in 2008, when the regional banks got crushed. We have the big banks pledging future earnings to make sure payrolls are met at small and medium businesses–those are the entities that are at most risk.

The Fed wants to get back to a healthy regional banking system in the US, and the only way to do that is to unwind all the shadow banking institutions that we had operating in the US. SVB was the biggest. Blackrock is the biggest shadow banking outfit in the world–they’re not a bank, but they act like one.

So why is the Credit Suisse (CS) merger with Union Bank Switzerland (UBS) so interesting? Why are the Europeans screaming so hard? The Fed was involved in the negotiations, but the ECB and other European institutions were cut out completely. So let’s talk about the CoCo (conditionally convertible) bonds, the Additional Tier One Capital (AT1) bonds that were the big sticking point.

The easiest way to explain this is in terms of poison pills. The classic poison pill defense strategy is to issue a bunch of shares and force the hostile takeover bidder to buy all the extra shares. It’s always a bluff and doesn’t really work. That’s what Twitter tried on Elon Musk and he simply waited them out. What was going on with these conditionally convertible AT1 bonds–this is the fundamental capital necessary for the bank to maintain their capital adequacy ratios under Basel III. If they don’t have tier one capital they run afoul of banking rules and could be shut down.

The AT1 conditionally convertible bond market was a $275 billion market–now its $258 billion because $17 billion were written to zero by UBS and CS as part of the merger deal. In a bank failure the bond holders are paid first, then the shareholders, and only then the depositors–depositors, in the absence of insurance, are like unsecured creditors. UBS and CS had covenants in their CoCo bonds that allowed them to write them down to zero under certain circumstances. The sticking point for UBS was that as of close on Friday, banks had suffered a drop in market caps by 25-40%. Now, for UBS to buy CS, they would have had to buy the $17 billion in CS CoCo bonds after just suffering a massive drop in market cap. That would mean a greatly inflated ownership share in UBS for the CS bondholders. The EU thought they had CS wrapped up and they’d be able to take out both UBS and the Swiss National Bank (SNB). If you’re Davos, which already kneecapped and destroyed the British banking system last summer and have been targeting CS for 8 months to take control of the Swiss banking system, you think you’ve finally got the upper hand over Powell and the Fed. Writing the CS bonds to zero made the merger possible and thwarted Davos.

The SNB holds $140 billion in high liquidity blue chip equities. It’s the biggest equity hedge fund in the world. If Davos takes control of the SNB, they also gain real leverage over US monetary policy, despite the Fed’s efforts to free the US from that control. If you want to destroy liquidity in the Dow Jones Industrials, then you take out the SNB. If you want to ensure that there are no escape hatches from the European sovereign debt crisis that’s being engendered by Powell’s high interest rate policy, then you neuter the SNB.

By writing the CS CoCo bonds down to zero they protected the Swiss banking system, and this is why everyone in Europe is screaming.

And for pure hilarity, here’s Kim with some great theater

No Retreat No Surrender

Armstrong Economics: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/markets-by-sector/interest-rates/the-fed-does-not-back-down/

The Fed Does Not Back Down

COMMENT: Marty, it’s refreshing to have Socrates that is totally unbiased. It projected continued rising rates into next year and the Fed just proved its point. It is not backing down.

Thank you. Socrates is very enlightening.

GS

ANSWER: I know there were a lot of talks that surely the Fed had to lower rates and start QE all over again. Most of those sorts of comments have no real experience in markets. They just mouth a lot of hot air. Perhaps instead of putting masks on cows, we should do that on the shills. The Federal Reserve had no choice but to raise interest rates although it was just by a quarter point. Not to do so and the Fed would lose all credibility and the market would then not take them seriously.

You MUST understand that this crisis has unfolded because too many banks were wrapped up in WOKE culture and hired people who were UNQUALIFIED to run risk management. Some were more excited about cross-dressing as a woman and winning the Rainbow award in banking than actually protecting the bank from the risk of rising interest rates. [Emphasis added]

In a statement released at the conclusion of the meeting, Fed officials acknowledged that recent financial market turmoil is weighing on inflation and the economy, though they expressed confidence in the overall system. “The US banking system is sound and resilient.” They had no choice but to make this statement.

“Recent developments are likely to result in tighter credit conditions for households and businesses and to weigh on economic activity, hiring and inflation. The extent of these effects is uncertain.”

The Fed is saying that their rise in rates will in fact reduce inflation and economic activity. The banks have this yield curve risk and that is different from the 2007-2009 crisis where the debt was based on fraud. Here, the debt is US Treasuries so they are not going bankrupt from that aspect, but it is a liquidity crisis.

If these people who scream loudly but know nothing really about finance keep up the nonsense, they will only add to the uncertainly. This inflation is accelerating thanks to the war.

ESG Bleedout

AFU Lines Bending and Breaking

Rumors of an AFU counterattack this week

Missile tests in the Pacific after Xi leaves Moscow

Open the Books on the SVB Progressive Money Laundry

Open the Books Fun Facts

  • SVB gave a$100,000 donation to the Newsom nonprofit, California Partners Project, in 2021.
  • The $100,000 donation was “behested,” meaning it was solicited by the governor himself, Gavin Newsom, and the disclosure was forced by state ethics relations on state websites.
  • The SVB investment banking president, John China, is a founding director at the Newsom nonprofit, California Partners Project.
  • The Newsom nonprofit was founded in 2020 to expressly push Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s public policy agenda at the Office of First Partner.
  • Gavin Newsom established The Office of First Partner as a taxpayer funded subdivision of the Office of Governor so Jennifer Siebel Newsom could push her public policy issues.
  • Taxpayers pay for nine staffers — $1 million per year for the Office of First Partner.
  • The Newsom’s first victory in tandem with their nonprofit, California Partners Project, was legislation which mandated gender quotas on corporate boards… the legislation was ruled discriminatory and tossed out by California courts after litigation by Judicial Watch.
  • The investment banking arm of SVB helped finance THREE of the governor’s private businesses!!
  • In 2018, Newsom said he would NOT sell his private businesses and called them “my babies, my life, my family… I can’t sell them.”
  • However, Newsom did sell interests in his businesses and presumably took home cash after SVB stepped in. All of this trading among insiders, friends, family, and acquittances needs scrutiny by regulators.

Don’t Bring a Drone to Gunfight. Message Received?

Note the damaged prop blades:

As reported by Just Security, at the time of the intercept, the Reaper was flying ~60 km (~35 miles) southwest of the Crimean Peninsula, Ukrainian territory that Russian lawfully annexed in 2014.

In this regard, the Russian Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, declared, “American aircraft have no business being near the Russian border.”

It is universally accepted that aircraft, including military platforms, enjoy the right of high seas overflight. This right is codified in Article 2 of the 1958 Convention on the High Seas, to which the United States is Party, and Article 87(1)(b) of the 1982 Law of Sea Convention (UNCLOS), to which it is not.

Russia is Party to both.

Despite UNCLOS non-Party status, the United States recognizes its navigational provisions as reflecting customary international law. Indeed, the DoD Law of War Manual and the U.S. Navy/Coast Guard/Marine Corps Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations both emphasize the right of military aircraft to conduct operations over the high seas (§ 13.2.3.1 and § 2.6.3, respectively).

As to the mission, Ambassador Antonov correctly noted that the Reaper is “a multipurpose [drone], with strike capabilities of up to a 1,700 kilograms explosive payload.”

The Reaper is also used for reconnaissance which, in this case, was actively supporting a belligerent in a war zone making it a belligerent performing an “internationally wrongful act” (Articles on State Responsibility, art. 2) in the form of a neutrality law violation.

The DoD’s Law of War Manual states that, during an international armed conflict, “[t]he principal duties of a neutral State are to abstain from any participation in the conflict and to be impartial in conduct towards contending parties” (§15.3.2). Intelligence sharing with one of the belligerents can certainly run afoul of this principle.

During an armed conflict, belligerents may create “operational zones” to prevent interference with their operations.

In fact, this is the claimed justification for the Russian intercept. According to Ambassador Antonov, the Reaper “was moving deliberately and provocatively towards the Russian territory with its transponders turned off [and] violated the boundaries of the temporary airspace regime established for the special military operation, which was communicated to all the concerned users of international airspace in accordance with international norms.”

United States legal doctrine recognizes operational zones for both aerial and naval operations. For instance, the DoD Law of War Manual (§ 14.7) provides,

During armed conflict, States may establish airspace zones and associated procedures intended to prohibit aircraft from entering or flying in designated areas, including areas in international airspace. Such zones may be established for a variety of purposes, including to decrease the risk of inadvertent attack of civil or neutral aircraft, to control the scope of the conflict, or to enhance the predictability and effectiveness of ongoing operations.

The United States claims it may establish such a zone in the “immediate area or vicinity” of naval operations “to ensure the security of its forces and its right to conduct hostilities without interference from neutrals” (id.).

Some other States active in maritime operations expressly agree (see, e.g., U.K. Law of Armed Conflict Manual, §13.8; Australia, Law of Armed Conflict, ¶ 6.16; Germany, Commander’s Handbook, ¶ 303).

The “immediate” area or vicinity “is that area within which hostilities are taking place, or belligerent State forces are actually operating” (§ 13.8.1).

As to the consequence of violation, the DoD Manual cautions that “[a]ny transmission to an opposing belligerent State of information concerning military operations or military forces is inconsistent with the neutral State’s duties of abstention and impartiality and renders the neutral State’s vessel or aircraft making such a communication liable to capture or destruction (§ 13.8.2; see also Commander’s Handbook, § 7.8).

This would apply if the Reaper was transmitting intelligence to Ukrainian forces — directly or indirectly.

If the Reaper was supporting Ukrainian operations as it most certainly was, it would seem to qualify as a “military objective” (see Additional Protocol I, art. 52(2), which reflects customary law).

Turn off your drone’s transponder, head into a bear’s den, and poke it, and bears may just poke back.

BTW, here’s warships from the Black Sea Fleet recovering the Reaper

Which brings us to Simplicus’s take on things (https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-31623-reaper-developments) who provides some context.

First thing’s first, some important updates on the ‘drone incident’. The US has now released their version of the footage, which can be seen here: VIDEO 1.

They appear to still be tenuously clinging to the claim that the plane ‘struck the drone’s propeller’, yet that is not evident in the video at all. Much more likely the plane merely bucked the drone from sheer turbulence and jet-wash, causing it to flip over—but I’m not discounting that the prop was clipped. It is strange that the drone camera continues to ‘malfunction’ each time the planes come close. Is the turbulence jostling the camera electronics too much, or the Su-27’s giving off some type of jamming signals at such proximity? Hard to know.

Some have pointed to this before and after shot, showing what appears to be like a deformed prop blade after the Russian fuel dump. However, props can look that way on cameras depending on the sync between the camera framerate and propeller speed, and there’s a chance that the propeller changed speed (perhaps due to slight throttling down by the operator, etc.) causing it to appear differently at that point on video. Maybe there are some better video experts that can chime in. But perhaps a chance exists that the ‘heavy’ fuel load ricocheting off the propeller at such squirted speeds caused it to deform. This would lead to eventual catastrophic failure of the prop due to vibratory forces in the uneven distribution of weight/aerodynamics, etc.

What we do know now however is that the MQ-9 Reaper is from one of the latest and most advanced Blocks, equipped with a highly advanced/sensitive ‘Gorgon’s Stare’ electronics suite.

Along with the Gorgon Stare, the drone had a variety of sensors which could do everything from record pinpoint video footage, thermal footage, Synthetic Aperture Radar snapshots of Russian bases/assets, record electronic emissions and signal data from Russian command HQ’s (C3), radar sites, and their positions. The Gorgon Stare itself, if you read the supplied wiki article, is run through a devious DARPA A.I. program called Mind’s Eye, which does all the things I once described in this article—basically: neural-network ‘smart’ analysis of recorded ground data where the AI can track/locate/assess/transmit targets on its own, all while geo-tagging them with various meta-data, etc. With these tools the drone is said to transmit many gigabytes of data per minute.

“The spy mission here is not even 100% visible, but 1000%. This is tactical reconnaissance – a fairly powerful high-resolution video camera and equipment that allows you to record the frequencies of radio stations, missile guidance stations, radar stations, determine the location of air defense systems, air defense systems, determine the location of headquarters, command posts and, due to visual reconnaissance, take pictures of a sufficiently high permission, ” explained Knutov.

Getting their hands on this Gorgon suite would be a huge boon for Russia. Which is why they have now positioned their ships and as of this writing are getting ready to lift the drone from what is said to be 900m depth.

American drone MQ-9 found at a depth of 900 meters. Above it, the duty of the Black Sea Fleet ships was established in order not to let anyone near the crash site. The issue of its rise is being resolved.

There is a ship in the Black Sea Fleet that is capable of doing this – the legendary “Kommuna” built in 1913. Rebuilt many times and having a huge track record of underwater work (including the recovery of several submarines, as well as aircraft and ships), it has deep-sea vehicles capable of operating at a depth of up to 1 km.

By the way, Kommuna has experience in lifting foreign equipment. In 1928, it raised the sunken British submarine L-55 in the Baltic, which was blown up by mines while evading Soviet destroyers.

The US however has claimed that they’ve done a ‘remote wipe’ on the Reaper’s data. This is questionable for a variety of reasons. Firstly, wiping data just once will never delete it, recovery specialists, particularly Russian ones which are likely the best in the world, can easily recover the data. But full industrial data-stripping takes many recurring passes of data writes to the memory chip over and over for it to be truly irrecoverable. But this takes time—time that the drone likely didn’t have as it was going down into the sea, at which point its batteries would have been flooded and likely any ‘data wipe’ operation stopped. So, the verdict is: data is probably recoverable unless the US has a special detonating self-destruct device planted on the data chip just for these types of circumstances.

To save face, John Kirby tried to pretend that US still has the ability to recover the drone. He hemmed and hawed and temporized when asked during a press conference if the drone can be recovered, stating that US “isn’t sure it can do it” in that region and at that depth, veiling the fact that the Russian fleet has already positioned itself entirely above the site and US isn’t even allowed to bring warships through the Bosporous as per the Montreaux Convention.

Satellite images of ships of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy near the crash site of the American MQ-9 Reaper UAV in the Black Sea.

Speaking of which—one very intriguing oddity should be mentioned. For the many months that US has flown its drones over the Black Sea, it has always strangely had to ‘go around’ Turkish territory.

Notice how the direct flightpath is always broken up by a necessary rerouting to the north into Bulgaria, just around the tip of Turkish territory near the Bosporous. It’s clear that Erdogan does not allow US war assets to bypass his territory enroute to monitor Russian SMO.

Now onto other things. One update as regards the last report about the purported Russian Kinzhal strikes on NATO assets. There is some chance that the drone incident is related.

As others have keenly noted, there is a strangely linked series of events which began with Russia’s very large missile strikes last week. There was something particularly painful and special about these strikes as several Ukrainian ministers/sources referred to the strikes with uncommonly strong words, some stating they were the most powerful strikes since the start of the SMO. Even Zelensky called it a ‘very strong signal to Ukraine’.

Then, as explained in our last report, we got word that 6 Kinzhals were used, and that a NATO HQ was possibly hit with 40+ dead. What is intriguing is, those strikes occurred on March 10th. Immediately following them on March 12th, the US sent an extremely provocative message by simulating a nuclear bombing run on St. Petersburg when they sent a B-52 bomber directly towards St. Pete in an unprecedented maneuver.

The nuclear-capable bomber cut away just before the Russian maritime border, down into Estonia. Why would they send such a direct and obvious message right after the March 10 attacks? It seems to me, those 6 confirmed Kinzhals were not sent in vain, or against unimportant targets. This likely confirms that 40+ NATO/CIA officers were infact liquidated as reports suggest, and the US deepstate is extremely bothered by this.

The US Air Force’s B-52H Stratofortress strategic bomber, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, developed the training for launching missiles into Russian territory, according to Military Observer.

About two hours ago, the plane entered a missile launch position in St. Petersburg in the region of the island of Gotland, located at a distance of about 200 km from the northern capital.

After this maneuver, the American bomber made a sharp turn and departed in the direction of Estonia. The plane is now entering Lithuanian airspace, the source said.

Only a day after that, they now suddenly send one of their most advanced drones directly toward Crimea/Sevastopol in another extremely aggressive and angst-ridden ‘message’.

They’ve never taken such a trajectory before, AND in darkmode with transponders turned OFF. Once again—it’s clear that the March 10th strikes really burned them badly and they are desperate to escalate or strike out like a wounded animal.

The logical explanation is that, there were some ‘unspoken’ agreements or red lines between the two Great Powers. And Russia finally broke that red line with the sextuple Kinzhal sneak attack.

A Tale of a Progressive Money Laundry

Now that we filled in some blanks, let’s add some color, courtesy of ZH

Gavin Newsom Kept SVB Ties Secret While Lobbying For Bailout

Multimillionaire California Governor Gavin Newsom failed to disclose his ties to Silicon Valley Bank while lobbying the White House and the Treasury Department over a pending bailout, The Intercept reported on Tuesday.

The White House “acted swiftly and decisively to protect the American economy and strengthen public confidence in our banking system,” Newsom said in a statement. What Newsom didn’t mention is that it also protected his own companies if they held over $250,000 in deposits.

CADE, Odette, and PlumpJack, three wineries owned by Newsom, are listed as clients of SVB on the bank’s website. Newsom also maintained personal accounts at SVB for years, according to a longtime former employee of Newsom’s who handled his finances, and who requested anonymity to avoid professional reprisal.

Newsom also failed to mention his wife’s professional ties to the bank. In 2021, SVB gave $100,000 to a charity founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the California Partners Project, at the request of Newsom. SVB Capital President, John China, sits on the Board of Directors of the charity.

On Monday, Newsom said that he had “been in touch with the highest levels of leadership at the White House and Treasury.”

“Governor Newsom’s business and financial holdings are held and managed by a blind trust, as they have been since he was first elected governor in 2018,” said Newsom spokesman Nathan Click.

Of note, when asked during his 2018 campaign whether he would divest from his companies which might pose an ‘ethics challenge,’ Newsom reportedly replied: “These are my babies, my life, my family. I can’t do that. I can’t sell them.”

Instead, he announced the blind trust, which would be controlled by family friend and attorney, Shyla Hendrickson – an arrangement under which Newsom’s sister, Hillary Newsom, would retain her role as president of PlumpJack Group – a Newsom owned company which includes hotels, restaurants, wineries, bars and liquor stores.