Author Archive: Stephen Green

March 18, 2026

CHANGE?

Posted at 10:24 am by Stephen Green on Mar 18th, 2026

THE ENEMY WITHIN:

China is a problem. But certain parts of the intel community are a bigger and more immediate problem.

Posted at 9:53 am by Stephen Green on Mar 18th, 2026

THIS IS CNN: CNN’s Man in Iran Tacitly Admits He Had a ‘Minder’ Who Informed Regime.

CNN had repeatedly insisted that senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen and the network maintained “full editorial control” about what they reported when the former was in inside Iran. But, in an interview with the U.K.-based newspaper The Guardian, which was less of an interview and more just answering prompts, Pleitgen asserted that he and his cameraman didn’t have a “minder” lurking over them. Yet, when he described who guided him around and what he was allowed to see, it very much sounded like a minder.

“Did you have a minder? Were you taken around by someone?” asked Guardian’s media and power reporter Jeremey Barr. A minder in this case being someone who worked with/for the regime who would shadow or guide a foreign journalist, who would only show them what the regime wanted, or to be a constant reminder the regime was in control over their stay and life.

Pleitgen initially suggest they CNN didn’t have a minder, but they did have “a guy” who showed them around and translated. He began to say the guy “obviously” had some sort of duty before cutting himself off and noting that the regime had asked the guy not to show them certain places.

Read the whole, and remember that this kind of thing is nothing new for the network: How CNN hid the truth about Saddam and betrayed the world.

Posted at 9:38 am by Stephen Green on Mar 18th, 2026

NIFTY:

Although I’d be surprised if the Pentagon (and Israel, too) hadn’t already figured this one out.

Posted at 9:22 am by Stephen Green on Mar 18th, 2026

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I SO Did Not Have ‘Gayatollah’ Khamenei on My Bingo Card. “Please believe me, dear readers, that I desperately want to be more mature about this story because this is a newsletter, after all. Then again, I am the snarky opinion guy around here and you’re all familiar with my observational peculiarities. Please know that my tongue is being figuratively bitten to avoid any fanciful pictures I might want to paint about a mullah bath house that pipes in Adam Lambert music all day.”

Posted at 9:07 am by Stephen Green on Mar 18th, 2026

BLUE STATE BLUES:

Posted at 8:51 am by Stephen Green on Mar 18th, 2026

DON’T LET UP NOW: ‘Worst of the worst’: Latest ICE roundup nabs murderers, pedophiles.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Tuesday announced the arrest of several violent criminals, including convicted murderers and pedophiles, as part of its latest “worst of the worst” roundup.

The “worst of the worst” series is part of an effort by DHS to highlight the criminal nature of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) priority targets amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

“Yesterday, ICE arrested criminal illegal alien murderers, pedophiles and sex criminals – the very definition of depraved,” acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said. “Under President Trump, if you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will find you and arrest you. There is nothing that will stop ICE from putting American families, American children and American lives FIRST.”

Trump has set a goal of deporting as many as 22 million illegal aliens from the country. As of January, DHS stated that roughly 3 million had left the country through a combination of physical deportations and voluntary exits.

Topping the list was Sergio Colin-Aviles of Mexico, who was convicted of homicide or manslaughter.

Dems want to keep them in the country, free-range.

Posted at 8:36 am by Stephen Green on Mar 18th, 2026

THIS RIGHT HERE IS THE BEST ARGUMENT FOR THE SAVE ACT:

Posted at 8:20 am by Stephen Green on Mar 18th, 2026

HMM: Flight Costs Are Up, but Travelers Aren’t Deterred, U.S. Airlines Say.

At an investor conference on Tuesday, executives from most major U.S. airlines said that robust travel demand was offsetting the effects of winter storms and a huge rise in the cost of jet fuel since the start of the war in Iran. The price of jet fuel on Monday was about 50 percent higher than it was before the war began on Feb. 28.

Executives at American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines said they had incurred $400 million each in higher fuel costs, but that they were not changing their profit forecasts for the first three months of the year because ticket sales remained strong. The executives said their airlines had broken daily or weekly records for ticket sales this year.

“It’s across all segments, covering corporate, covering international, covering premium leisure, covering main cabin, covering our domestic system,” Delta’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, said at the J.P. Morgan 2026 Industrials Conference in Washington. “We’re seeing strength in every market that we look at.”

It’s the same story with beef prices. They’re at or near record highs, but consumer are still buying — there’s little-to-none “protein substitution” going on, even with 80/20 ground beef nearing $7 a pound at Walmart.

Whatever the press tells you about how pinched consumers are, we’re still spending on the things we like.

Posted at 7:34 am by Stephen Green on Mar 18th, 2026

NEXT!

Posted at 7:19 am by Stephen Green on Mar 18th, 2026

March 17, 2026

DID AN IRANIAN EMBASSY JUST DEFECT?

UPDATE (From Ed):

Posted at 6:50 pm by Stephen Green on Mar 17th, 2026

I DUNNO, IT’S SO HARD TO TELL THE HOST FROM THE PARASITE:

Posted at 4:53 pm by Stephen Green on Mar 17th, 2026

HMM:

Exit quote: “The bottom line – Iran is transitioning into an extremist military regime where Mojtaba Khamenei acts as a mere ‘puppet’ of the Revolutionary Guards, who completely control the country.”

That’s in line with my thoughts from a week or two ago, so naturally I’m inclined to agree. Heh.

What’s the mean going forward? Predictions are hard, the wise man said, especially about the future.

Posted at 4:35 pm by Stephen Green on Mar 17th, 2026

PANSPERMIA: Asteroid Ryugu Contains All 5 DNA and RNA Building Blocks, Study Shows.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the Hayabusa2 mission in 2014, sending a spacecraft on a 186-million-mile (300-million-kilometer) journey to Ryugu. One year after reaching the asteroid in 2018, the spacecraft landed on its surface and fired a projectile into it. Hayabusa2’s “catcher” then gathered up the chunks of ejected debris, and the spacecraft carried them back to Earth.

Astronomers have run many analyses of the Ryugu samples since then, but Koga and his colleagues are the first to find all five nucleobases inside them. The researchers studied samples that were collected and curated under strictly controlled conditions and conducted their analysis in a cleanroom to further prevent contamination. They also ran tests to confirm the molecules formed on Ryugu rather than coming from Earth.

Fascinating.

Posted at 2:49 pm by Stephen Green on Mar 17th, 2026

BELIEVE THEM WHEN THEY TELL YOU WHO THEY ARE, PARTICULARLY WHEN THEY DO IT EVERY TIME, GOING BACK DECADES:

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green on Mar 17th, 2026
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