THE MOUSE THAT ROARS: THE GRAND DUCHY OF LUXEMBOURG
Two days ago, you'll recall, I blogged about Mr. Elon Musk's Space X corporation's "proof of concept" launch to place one of his Tesla roadsters - playing David Bowie no less - in orbit around Mars. As I indicated yesterday, I'm not buying the narrative for a New York minute, and as I argued yesterday, the Chinese news agency Xinhua may not be buying that explanation either.
Which brings us to today's little venture in the the realm of high octane speculation and space matters.
Sometimes, when contemplating these types of stories, I cannot help but feel I'm living in some weird sort of real world version of Leonard Wibberly's classic lampoon novels, The Mouse that Roared and The Mouse on the Moon. For example, when one thinks of "spy satellites" or "military satellites," one normally thinks of countries like "USA, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Japan." I'll bet that "the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg" probably doesn't appear on anyone's list of countries associated with military satellites. What has this to do with Leonard Wibberly's novels? Well, for those unaware of them, The Mouse that Roared is about a small and all-but-forgotten micro-state in Europe, the fictional Grand Duchy of Fenwick, whose sole source of income is a particularly fine pinot wine called Pinot Grand Fenwick. Alas, a cheap California knock-off called Pinot Grand Enwick begins to be marketed, threatening the national security of the five-mile-long Grand Duchy, which, taking matters into its own hands, declares war on the United States for the outrageous affront to its national survival. The elaborate and florid Declaration of War from the Grand Duchy, addressed to the President and People of the United States by Grand Duchess Gloriana the Thirteenth (and which, incidentally, begins with the word "Greetings") makes it to the Department of Agriculture, where faceless bureaucrats assume it's someone's idea of a joke or prank, and is promptly lost in a shuffle of paperwork. Meanwhile, the Grand Duchy's tiny army of ten chain-mail armored knights lands in New York City, and kidnaps a nuclear scientist along with his super-bomb capable of a continental-sized blast, and brings him and the bomb back to the Grand Duchy before the United States is even aware that it is at war and has been successfully invaded. The Grand Duchy threatens to detonate the bomb and wipe everyone out, unless the United States surrenders. Which it does. Similar adventures ensue when the Grand Duchy joins the United States and the Soviet Union in the space race to the moon.
Enter the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and Elon Musk, whose Space X corporation also recently launched a "military satellite" for the Grand Duchy, according to this article shared by Mr. H.B.:
SpaceX blasts off Luxembourg government satellite
(Seriously, folks, could things get any weirder?)
The article notes something intriguing:
SpaceX on Wednesday blasted off a four-ton secure military communications satellite called GovSat-1, a partnership between the government of Luxembourg and the satellite operator SES.
"There you saw a successful liftoff of the Falcon 9," a SpaceX commentator said as the rocket launched on a sunny day from Cape Canaveral at 4:25 pm (2125 GMT).
The satellite will enable "secure communication links between theaters of tactical operations, for maritime missions or over areas affected by humanitarian crises," said a SpaceX statement.
The SES company in turn is a Luxembourg-based company, and here's its own explanation of the satellite launch:
GovSat-1: Secure Communications for Governments
And here's what the company itself says about its satellite:
GovSat-1 was designed for dual use to support both defence and civil security applications, including mobile and fixed communications. It is a multi-mission satellite that offers X-band and Military Ka-band capacity. The spacecraft will provide up to six high-powered and fully steerable spot beams, as well as an advanced Global X-band beam.
The X-band frequency is reserved for governments and institutions, and is an ideal mean to establish secure and robust satellite communication links, for example between theaters of tactical operations, maritime missions or over areas affected by a humanitarian crisis.
The Military Ka-band will be used predominantly for mobility applications in support of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The secure communication links it enables are characterised by smaller high-throughput VSAT terminals. The Mediterranean sea is one particular area covered by a high-power beam in military Ka-band. It is therefore ideally suited to enable communications for European Border Surveillance applications.
Equipped with anti-jamming features, encrypted telemetry and control, and frequencies reserved for governmental use, GovSat-1 will also provide enhanced resilience capabilities for more reliable connectivity. (Emphases added)
In other words, this is a "spy and communications satellite-for-hire", or at least, that's its ostensible purpose. So why Luxembourg? As I've blogged before on this website, Luxembourg is a major international banking hub, and has recently become a center for development of space commercialization and a center of thinking for the development of space law. And its influence in the European Union is hardly commensurate to its tiny size, as EU dictocrat and capo di capi, Jean-Claude Juncker, hails from the Grand Duchy.
To be noted is that the satellite is apparently intended "to enable communications for European Border Surveillance applications," which suggests firstly that a possible change in the EU's refugee policy might be in the offing, and secondly, suggests that a system of controls might be in the offing to track individuals.
So what does all this mean? My high octane speculation and intuition is that this is a first practical step on the build-out of redundancy into the financial clearing system, but with a unique twist: a surveillance capacity-for-hire comes with it, and this capacity could thus signal that non-territorial actors are being deliberately courted as the "target market" for the capability. Hence, the relationship with Musk's Space X is significant, for it presages more such launches of similar payloads in the future. Indeed, if certain of the satellite's capabilities are "reserved for governments and institions", one wonders exactly what those institutions are: banks, foundations, corporations come to mind, as also more salacious organizations.
In effect, Wibberly's fictitious Cold War scenario of the Mouse that Roared and The Mouse on the Moon is, in a way, becoming reality: Luxembourg means to be a player in the emerging space-based financial, communications, surveillance system.
And that means, more significantly, that Luxembourg will have to develop the means to defend those assets, and that, to my mind, is where those unnamed "institutions" and organizations come in. It will, in short, have to learn how to roar, and to acquire the means to do so.
See you on the flip side...
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as I’ve often stated on this website (and will state it again) all the “action” on our planet is being co-ordinated in its core from tiny, unimportant sleepy countries like Switzerland (where the banks are) and Luxembourg (where the banks are)-
Larry in Germany
I’ve been to Luxembourg and had some Luxembourgish colleagues at one time. Everyone very pleasant but there was a sense of much being left unsaid – many things contained behind a damn wall of silence.
The place is odd: it reminds me in some way of the emotional space created in the movie “The Island”, where all the people are being grown for their organs and body parts.
When I read this blog post, my mind skipped to Walter Bosley’s Nymza group. I wonder what the relations of these royals are to the Nymza group/families?
Dr. Farrell – You are truly an INSPIRED brilliant genius!
Why do I write that from my heart? It’s the topic you assigned to this article “THE MOUSE THAT ROARS: THE GRAND DUCHY OF LUXEMBOURG” coupled with your outstanding presentation.
I am sending you a private email that I most sincerely ask you share immediately with the lovely, CAF with a whole “kitten-caboodle” of documents – why the Luxembourg Satellite.
It concerns MANY, MANY RATS that have been scurrying a long long time always seeking to destroy.
In the mean time, pour yourself a stiffener and if you got em, smoke them. It’s time to celebrate that you solved the mystery once again in the ever loving “Farrell Fashion” laced with joviality and high octane. Thank you.
With love and gratitude from my heart for the wisdom and courage you and CAF exemplify in everything both you have done and continue to do for the people and universe.
You most certainly opened my eyes on the extent and expanse of the space missions and their purposes. I had little idea of how technically advanced they are now. I mean I certainly had an idea.. but love that you brought it delivered on a platter.. thank you.
it does seem peter sellers had his finger on the pulse. who else could do dr strangelove and this in the same lifetime?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7L7WLFBYR4
Fun UK/British Fact for Americans who don’t know such strange British trivia: the actor Bernard Cribbins (just mentioned in my previous post about The Mouse That Roared etc) was known for “novelty songs” in the late 1950s and early 1960s. One of these songs was called, “Hole in the Ground”. It was an amusing little ditty about a man digging a hole for the local council or whatnot, and the man being irritated by the foreman for the work. The cheery little song ends with the foreman being “put in the hole”. It sounds kind of funny in a corny, old fashioned British kind of way until you realise that the foreman may have been murdered for being a bureaucratic idiot. The 50s were dark, man!!!
The Mouse That Roared and The Mouse on the Moon were made into films starring great British actors of the time like Peter Sellers, Margaret Rutherford, Bernard Cribbins(!), Ron Moody (Fagan from Oliver!), David Kossoff, the great, hyphenated Terry-Thomas, and others. They’re of their time, very British, and probably still quite watchable (I’ve not seen them in 30 years but they’re etched into my memory). I can still hear David Kossoff, going on about “bobolinks” (a kind of bird) … great lampoons of politics, the space age, and people … great fun!
I didn’t know mice could ROAR, why wasn’t I told ???
Talking about small and allegedly weak countries going to strange places, Belgium (which is hard put to stop crime on the streets of its own capital) maintains a station in Antarctica called Princesse Elisabeth. With the occasional collaboration of the University of Luxembourg…
Don’t get me started on Belgium… I almost settled in Brussels in the pre-euro days when you could buy a city block for a pittance…
Brussels is a city I truly love and know intimately, but it is also the HQ of NATO and the EU and… what a surprise, Mohlenbeek is the Muslim immigrant community (read slum) where all of Europe’s terrorists come from. A German friend called it the EU and NATO’s garden, where they cultivate tomorrow’s terrorists. Spot on, that.
Luxembourg is a kind of extramural state; no industry, no resources, no great political gravitas or institutions. But it seems to have the special ability to exploit tax loop-holes and corporatize its own liminal economic influence in a kind of financial sorcery the Venetians would admire.
Luxembourg is the Delaware of Europe, a collection of banks masquerading as a country. I’ve been there twice, unfortunately; it is deadly boring, as only exceedingly wealthy places can be.
Strangely for a place so landlocked, gambas (jumbo shrimp) are featured in all the restaurants, mostly because the people who make the place actually work are the Portuguese immigrant community who live in the valleys; the banksters all live on top of the hills.
The place is rolling in fiat and the banks all sit out there on the top of a hill in a ridiculous parody of a US subdivision, each one on its lot, spaced just-so from its neighbor. It’s all surreal and banal and reeking of money. We were driven around the country (it takes about a half-hour) by a chamberlain, who showed us the sie of the art museum, being built on a limestone promontory, so undermined by water infiltration that they essentially had to rebuild the hill to build the museum. It cost gazillions but no one batted an eye.
So that is Luxembourg. What a surprise that they’ve launched a secure-communications satellite that will bring them dumpsters-full of cash.
I bet they don’t have any African savages running loose, do they? db
Open boarders for Israel AND Luxembourg…
(First, the Tesla ‘satellite’ is in a solar orbit with perihelion close-to Earth’s orbital distance and aphelion almost to the inner asteroid belt. Not in orbit around Mars…)
Well, on the various Grand Duchies, one has to look at why they still exist. Almost by definition, a Duchy cannot defend itself and exists solely at the ‘pleasure’ of larger states or Powers. (This includes technically non-Duchy nations like Switzerland.) Most often, these are ‘neutral’ areas where various financial shenanigans (legal and illegal funds transfer) take place under the radar. That is why they are not absorbed into their neighbors. (An attempt is being made to split-off Catalonia from Spain for much the same purposes.)
So, why is the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg lofting a four-ton, military-grade, communications satellite into Earth orbit? Same as above. Think of it as a secure, internet-in-the-sky for any funds-transfer. Desirable? (Plus, the same for any clandestine conversation, but this is probably secondary.)
This leads to: Who is the mover-and-shaker to force this ‘network’ into being? Obviously, way up on the PTB. My high-octane guess is one of the Anunnaki, now residing in Luxembourg…
(Wikipedia: “SES S.A. is a communications satellite owner and operator based in Betzdorf, Luxembourg.” Perfect for a privately-owned ‘firewall’ against inquiries. Look into their Board of Directors for motives. Also, SpaceX is privately-owned; another ‘firewall’ against inquiries. Secure, end to end…)
“Scientists Think They Know where Elon Musk’s Space Roadster will Ultimately Land”
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/264047-scientists-think-know-elon-musks-space-roadster-will-ultimately-land
If you can have a puppet president;
you can have a puppet government.
Just like the USA is the best democracy you can buy;
Luxembourg is another sort of governance tool
to wield structured violence upon the face of humanity.
A better governance instrument to build a bridge beyond their dead rock. For Earth is not a source of living wealth in their economic structures of violence. Nor is space going to be one, if “they” have control.
Speaking of Luxembourg, has anyone seen the series Patriot on Amazon……
“John Tavner doesn’t really fit in with his quirky colleagues at the industrial piping corporation where he works. They don’t really know much about him, but what they don’t realize is that his life has been anything but mundane. To prevent Iran from going nuclear, he has assumed a fake persona as an average businessman when in reality he is actually a highly skilled intelligence officer, who took the piping job because of the routine business trips to Luxembourg, and because the job is secluded and too dull to be noticed. Unfortunately for him a European cop is at his heels trying to discover who he is, his incessantly grim and nervous coworker Mr. Icabod has figured out that he isn’t who he says, and Steven, a chubby employee with a recent brain injury, is starting to remember a horrible act which John may have inflicted.”
I’m beginning to wonder if our little planet earth is the rehab unit of our galaxy. SIGH
SPACE WINERY
Gulliver in Lilliput land
is only bound in mind,
and his giant stand
is not led by blind.
Man Mountain vineyard
with slopes of grape
grows always upward
to flavour celestial space.
Winery in clearing
has no muddled drop,
as noble wine flowing
always stays on top.