Kremlin Blames US For Crashed Drone: 'Flying With Transponders Off Towards Russian Border'

Update(1510ET): After nearly two hours since the story first broke in international press, the Kremlin has issued its version of events concerning the US drone crash in the Black Sea Tuesday. The Russian Defense Ministry said nothing about the Pentagon's allegations that a Russian Su-27 aircraft dumped fuel on the MQ-9 drone, but instead blamed the pair of Russian jets' erratic maneuvering for the collision.

"US drone MQ-9 fell into the Black Sea on Tuesday morning due to its own sharp maneuvering, Russian fighters did not come into contact with it and did not use weapons, the Russian Defense Ministry said," according to Russian media. The statement is as follows [emphasis ours]:

"As a result of sharp maneuvering around 09:30 Moscow time [06:30 GMT], unmanned aerial vehicle MQ-9 went into an uncontrolled flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface. The Russian fighters did not use airborne weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle and returned safely to their home airfield" the ministry said.

The Russian fighters had been scrambled in response to the drone being picked up on radar: "The ministry clarified that on the morning of March 14, the airspace control of the Russian Aerospace Forces had recorded the flight of US unmanned aerial vehicle MQ-9 over the Black Sea in the region of the Crimean peninsula in the direction of the Russian state border." However, the ministry further noted that the UAV had been flying with its transponders turned off while headed towards Russia's border.

Interestingly, the Kremlin is accusing the Pentagon of ignoring military-to-military protocols related to the war in Ukraine, established in order to avoid inadvertent NATO-Russia clashes:

The flight of the drone "was carried out with transponders turned off, violating the boundaries of the area of the temporary regime for the use of airspace, established for the purpose of conducting a special military operation, communicated to all users of international airspace and published in accordance with international standards," the MoD said.

So given the Russian side has confirmed there was no shootdown, both sides can collectively breath a sigh of relief for now, given this was a highly dangerous incident that had the potential to unleash a shooting war as the two superpower rivals continue crisscrossing airspace over the Black Sea, not far from frontline fighting in Ukraine.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-reaper-drone-downed-over-black-sea-incident-russian-jet

Former Treasury Official Says US Banks On Verge Of ‘Nationalization’

A former Treasury Department official said Tuesday that American banks were on the verge of being nationalized following the Friday collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the government’s response.

“What the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank. What that really means — and they won’t say it, and I’ll come back to that — what that really means is that they have guaranteed the entire deposit base of the U.S. financial system. The entire deposit base,” Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, told CNN host Kaitlan Collins. “Why? Because you can’t guarantee all the deposits in Silicon Valley Bank and then the next day say to the depositors, say, at First Republic, sorry, yours aren’t guaranteed. Of course they are.”

Federal regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank Friday after its stock price collapsed and customers began a bank run following the financial institution’s disclosure of a $1.8 billion loss on asset sales due to high interest rates, CNBC reported. Depositors who had accounts at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, which was shut down by regulators Sunday, will be able to fully recover their funds, the FDIC announced Sunday in conjunction with the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve.

“So this is a breathtaking step which effectively nationalizes or federalizes the deposit base of the U.S. financial system. You can call it a bailout, you can call it something else, but it’s really absolutely profound,” Altman continued. “Now, the authorities, including the White House, are not going to say that because what I just said of course implies that they have just nationalized the banking system. Technically speaking, they haven’t. But in a broad sense, they are verging on that.”

When Collins called Altman’s statements “remarkable,” Altman emphasized that he had not said the banks had been nationalized.

“I said they are verging on that because they have guaranteed the entire deposit base. Usually the term nationalization means that the government takes over the institution and runs it and the government owns it,” Altman explained. “That would be the type of nationalization we have seen in many other countries throughout the world. Obviously, that did not happen here. When you guarantee the entire deposit base, you have put the federal government and the taxpayer in a much different place in terms of protection than we were in a week ago.”

https://dailycaller.com/2023/03/14/roger-altman-nationalization-silicon-valley-bank/

Speaker McCarthy: Administration ‘Fighting Every Step of the Way’ Against Biden Family Business Investigations

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told Breitbart News last week that Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration has been “fighting” against transparency “every step of the way” with GOP investigators probing the president’s family business dealings.

McCarthy’s interview, taped on Wednesday in the ceremonial U.S. House Speaker’s office, came before the Treasury Department finally, after weeks, relented and agreed to provide the many Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) on Biden family members’ bank transactions. McCarthy sat for the hourlong interview as part of the long form Breitbart News exclusive On The Hill video series. The first part, on McCarthy’s decision to release Jan. 6, 2021, surveillance footage from the Capitol, was published last week. This second part is one of many other major topics, including on other investigations, the debt ceiling, leftist efforts to engage in censorship of conservatives, the rising threat of China, and the currently open U.S. southern border, addressed in the interview. More is forthcoming.

SARs are when a bank flags for the government suspicious activity regarding transactions, and apparently several Biden family members including the president’s son Hunter Biden and his brother James Biden have several of them. For months this year, the Treasury Department refused to provide the documents to Congress, but after the McCarthy interview with Breitbart News last week the administration relented this week and agreed to provide the documents to the committee.

“Why?” McCarthy asked when Breitbart News asked him why the Biden Administration was covering up these documents. “There are hundreds of them. It’s not easy to get one of those to happen, and it’s not with one bank. Why would they hold that up?”

McCarthy said that House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) has the authority to follow this investigation wherever it leads, even though the Biden White House and administration have been resisting investigators at every turn.

“Jamie Comer has been doing an excellent job on this,” McCarthy said when asked where this goes. “He has a great information book behind this. We are following the information every place it takes us but what we’re finding is the administration is fighting every step of the way. Why would they fight it? It’s very interesting to us. Why would they fight just the story on the laptop itself? Why would they go out of their way to get people who are in the intel community—literally, 52 of them—to sign a letter to say it was false? Well, we’re bringing those people in. We’re going to cross every T and dot every I and we’re going to get all the information here.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/03/14/exclusive-speaker-mccarthy-administration-fighting-every-step-way-against-biden-family-business-investigations/

San Francisco Board of Supervisors Reviews Reparations Plan: $5 Million Per Black Person

California was never a slave state, but the San Francisco “Reparations Committee” is proposing to pay each longtime black resident $5 million and grant them total debt forgiveness for suffering decades of “systemic repression.”

“While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement,” the proposed draft says.

“A lump sum payment would compensate the affected population for the decades of harms that they have experienced, and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy,” the draft says.

The committee is also proposing the debt forgiveness plan because “Black households are more likely to hold costlier, riskier debt, and are more likely to have outstanding student loan debt.”

The reparations committee is also planning to supplement lower-income blacks so they can afford housing.

“Racial disparities across all metrics have led to a significant racial wealth gap in the City of San Francisco,” the draft says. “By elevating income to match AMI, Black people can better afford housing and achieve a better quality of life.”

San Francisco Council President Shamann Walton says the millions of dollars in reparations, debt forgiveness and supplemental income is not enough.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors met on Tuesday to review the committee’s plans to pay reparations to black residents.

“An estimated 50,000 Black people live in San Francisco, but it’s unclear who among them would be eligible for reparations. Under the committee’s draft reparations plan, a person must be at least 18 years old and identified as “Black/African American” in public documents for at least 10 years. Eligible people must also meet two of eight other criteria, such as living in San Francisco during a certain time period or descending from someone incarcerated for the police war on drugs.” Fox News reported.

The Board of Supervisors will vote to accept all or parts of the reparations committee’s recommendations.

Fox News reported:

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is meeting Tuesday to review a proposal to dole out $5 million each to qualifying Black residents in reparations as a way to make amends for slavery.

At the board meeting, the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee will present the controversial idea, along with dozens of other recommendations from its draft reparations plan released in December.

The other recommendations range from offering grants to buy and maintain homes to exempting Black businesses from paying taxes. But the $5 million lump-sum payment has garnered the most attention — and controversy.

The Board of Supervisors can vote to adopt all, none, or some of the committee’s recommendations and even change them. Tuesday’s hearing was originally scheduled for last month but was postponed.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/03/san-francisco-board-of-supervisors-reviews-reparations-plan-5-million-per-black-person/

Trump Attorney Joe Tacopina Calls for Investigation of the Unhinged New York County District Attorney’s Office for Political Weaponization Against the Former President

On Monday, Joseph Tacopina, President Donald Trump’s attorney, joined Sean Hannity to discuss the weaponization of the New York County District Attorney’s Office against President Trump and his written request to have the DA’s office itself investigated.

Tacopina detailed how the DA’s office, desperate to get rid of President Trump and curtail his political ambitions, has scoured every aspect of his life in the hopes of finding some legal basis to prosecute him.

As each far-fetched and convoluted attempt fails, the NYDA simply pivots to a new theory in a series of politically motivated investigations.

Tacopina details the prosecutorial misconduct that is a blatant and unconstitutional effort to weaponize the NYDA to stop President Trump from running for re-election.

Specifically, Tacopina requests an investigation into the motives and actions of former lead prosecutors, former District Attorney Cyrus Vance, former NYDA General Counsel Carey Dunne, and former Special Assistant District Attorney Mark Pomerantz as well as the current prosecutors including District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Speaking with Hannity, Tacopina shares:

I still hold out hope that justice will prevail Sean, because there has to be, and is in fact, a heavy dose of disgust in the legal community. In the bar, with prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges…that they’re doing this. This is not what we do. The legal system has now been weaponized, and completely weaponized.

And you know, you could read that idiot Mark Pomerantz’s book, who violated all sorts of Grand Jury secrecy laws, had a fiduciary duty to keep things confidential, and instead wrote a book.

And if you read his book, he even said….it was amazing what he admitted there…that he was just looking for a crime to fit the person. And that’s not what we do and that’s not what we should be doing.

Clearly, here, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has stooped to that level if they are looking at this Stormy Daniels because one thing is clear…that every single legal scholar, former members of the federal election committee have opined that no crime was committed here. There was no campaign law violation. At all.

Tacopina continues

Any prosecution in this matter would be completely unprecedented, meaning this would be the first ever in the history of this country. And think about that….think of that statement…let that roll around in your brain…for a minute or two. Campaign finance laws are murky to begin with, and all the underlying legal theories that they have here, that we’ve been hearing about from the Manhattan DA’s office are untested…completely untested…and have never been utilized in this manner.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/03/trump-attorney-joe-tacopina-calls-for-investigation-of-the-unhinged-new-york-county-district-attorneys-office-for-political-weaponization-against-the-former-president/

Idaho Republicans Plead with Biden to Flood U.S. Labor Market with More Foreign Workers, Approve Amnesty

Republicans in the Idaho legislature are looking to approve a resolution that would ask President Joe Biden, as well as Congress, to flood the United States labor market with more foreign workers as well as to grant an amnesty that would give green cards to millions of illegal aliens holding American jobs.

A resolution, authored by State Sen. Jim Guthrie (R) and cosponsored by State Sens. Treg Bernt (R), Linda Hartgen (R), and Chuck Winder (R), asks the federal government to stem the flow of illegal immigration by requiring E-Verify for employers, among other things, while also expanding the number of foreign workers business can import to take mostly working class, blue-collar jobs.

The goal, the resolution states, ought to be to fill U.S. jobs with a constant stream of foreign workers. Amnesty, which would reward illegal aliens with work permits and green cards, should be part of any such legislation, the Republicans write in the resolution:

… it is incumbent upon the Congress and President of the United States to strengthen our national security and the security of the several states, including Idaho, by adopting targeted, common sense, business-focused, market-driven immigration reform, which at its core must include the following: [Emphasis added]

…

An effective guestworker program that meets the labor needs and demands of year-round agriculture, construction, hospitality, food processing, manufacturing, technology and other market sectors, and in particular allows cyclical worker visas of adequate length to meet the labor demands of Idaho agriculture and business; [Emphasis added]

An effective process by which persons currently present in the United States without lawful status and who are gainfully employed and their immediate family can obtain work authorization or residency status, without a pathway to United States citizenship, provided said persons have no criminal history beyond their immigration-related violations, and provided further that an appropriate fine is assessed and paid in satisfaction of their immigration-related violations; [Emphasis added]

Republican State Reps. Judy Boyle, Chenele Dixon, Rod Furniss, Stephanie Mickelsen, Jack Nelsen, Jerald Raymond, Lori McCann, and Melissa Durrant are also cosponsoring the resolution.

The legislators claim that Idaho’s economy is “threatened and harmed by the unavailability of lawful labor needed to harvest, process, and transport our domestic food supply, to extract mineral, gas, oil, and timber resources, to build homes, businesses and highways, and to provide other basic life necessities,” even as nearly 26,000 Idahoans remain jobless.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/03/14/idaho-republicans-plead-biden-flood-u-s-labor-market-more-foreign-workers-approve-amnesty/

Asian Stock Markets Tumble in Wake of SVB Collapse

The aftershocks of Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) multibillion-dollar collapse reached Asia on Tuesday, as stock indexes in Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong tumbled by more than two percent.

Unsurprisingly, bank stocks were hit especially hard amid fears of a banking “contagion” spreading from SVB to the rest of the world.

“Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index closed down 2.2% with shares of Softbank falling 4.1%, Mizuho Financial Group dropping 7.1% and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group sinking 9.8%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index closed down 2.4% Tuesday,” Voice of America News (VOA) reported on Tuesday.

CNN surveyed the carnage among banks in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul:

In Hong Kong, shares in Bank of China (Hong Kong) and Hang Seng Bank fell 3.7% and 1.3% respectively. Pan-Asian insurer AIA Group traded down 4.7%.

In Tokyo, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan’s biggest bank, lost 8.4%. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group both dropped more than 7%.

In Seoul, KB Financial Group and Shinhan Financial Group fell 3.6% and 2.5% respectively.

CNBC noted on Tuesday that Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index had a rough day as well, closing down 1.41 percent.

VOA suggested Asian markets do not seem entirely reassured by the Biden administration’s promises that the damage from SVB’s implosion will be fully contained and its depositors made whole, without a taxpayer bailout. It will indeed be a gigantic taxpayer bailout, but the money will be collected from American workers by their banks, not the IRS.

The possibility that more banks may yet come tumbling down in the aftershock from SVB is still causing jitters in both domestic and foreign markets, and they are unlikely to breathe a sigh of relief until a few weeks have passed.

The Asian dip might have been driven by continuing anxiety in the American markets, where losses have been reported every day since the SVB story broke. Adding to the market’s woes, the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) released on Tuesday showed inflation rising again in February, exacerbating the very conditions that triggered SVB’s collapse.

On the bright side, U.S. bank stocks appeared to be rallying on Tuesday afternoon, which might restore some confidence to the Asian market as well.

“Investors fear other financial institutions are sitting on significant unrealized losses on their balance sheets because of markedly higher interest rates,” credit ratings agency DBRS Morningstar observed on Monday.

Getting through the rest of this week without any more mushroom clouds rising over American financial institutions would be very helpful.

“If we do not see any high-profile failures in the near future, then the fears would subside,” predicted Cresset Capital chief investment officer Jack Ablin.

CMC Markets analyst Tina Teng told CNBC on Monday that Asian markets are especially nervous because powerhouses China and Japan have avoided raising interest rates, as most of the rest of the world has done. The Bank of Japan, in fact, is still holding interest rates at negative 0.1 percent.

“Credit risks might be the major issue that Asian banks face at the back of a gloomy economic outlook and dampened consumer demands,” Teng warned.

Other analysts said Asian banks tend to invest most of their deposits in loans, rather than securities, so the impact of SVB’s detonation will be muted.

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2023/03/14/asian-stock-markets-tumble-in-wake-of-svb-collapse/

He should go read the Russian response instead of GASLIGHTING the people on FAKE NEWS SKY

https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/not-playing-by-the-rules-russia-called-to-explain-us-air-force-drone-crash-by-defence-minister-richard-marles/news-story/be5827ac3ff38192342738739cc38f6d

Russia comments on US drone crash in Black Sea

The UAV was flying towards the Russian border without an active transponder, in clear violation of the restricted area established for the conduct of the special military operation, the ministry said. Two interceptors were dispatched to investigate.

“As a result of sharp maneuvers around 9:30am Moscow time, the MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle went into uncontrolled flight, lost altitude, and collided with the water surface. The Russian fighters did not use weapons, did not come into contact with the UAV, and returned safely to their home base,” the defense ministry said in a statement.

https://www.rt.com/russia/572980-russia-us-drone-down/