Author Archive: Stephen Green
January 24, 2023
From the 2018 report:
It was a life-or-death call. The Chinese government had been systematically picking off American spies in China, dismantling a network that had taken the CIA years to build. A mole hunt was underway, and the former officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, was the prime suspect.
The FBI could have arrested him on the spot for possessing classified information. But inside a secretive government task force, investigators argued against it, former U.S. officials recalled. If Lee were a turncoat, arresting him on an unrelated charge would tip off the Chinese and allow them to cover their tracks. If he was not the mole, and some argued strenuously that he was not, an arrest might allow the real traitor to escape.
So the FBI allowed Lee to return to Hong Kong, court papers show, where he hastily resettled with his family. The agents gambled that by watching patiently, they might piece together how China had decimated the United States’ spy network, and determine whether Lee had helped.
Nearly five years later, when Lee made a surprise return to the United States this week, the FBI made its move. He stepped off a Cathay Pacific flight at Kennedy International Airport on Monday. A waiting FBI agent, Kellie O’Brien, called out his name, according to court records. Lee answered, and was arrested.
His apprehension, on the same single charge that could have been brought years ago, is the latest development in one of the most damaging affairs in modern CIA history.
The kicker: “When the CIA noticed in late 2010 that its spies were disappearing, suspicion did not immediately turn to Lee, according to current and former officials. But as fears of a mole grew, the government set up a secret task force of CIA officers and FBI agents. A veteran FBI counterintelligence agent, Charles McGonigal, was assigned to run it, former U.S. law enforcement officials said.”
Now that McGonigal is alleged to have been in bed with the Russians, that sheds quite a light on his drawn-out investigation into Chinese spy Jerry Chun Shing Lee.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Wow, Russian Collusion Shows Up in the Weirdest Places. “It’s not surprising that a former FBI agent who reached his greatest heights in the Bureau thanks to James Comey is a scumbag, but his area of scumbaggery raises an eyebrow or two.”
NORMALIZING PEDOPHILIA: Next Step in the War on Kids.
Going by previous patterns, including the move to get people to say “Minor Attracted Person” or “MAP” instead of “pedophile,” (which most of the academic types and some ordinary, otherwise-sane people have started using on Twitter and other social media), it seems likely to me that this one isn’t far from a crucial point. This tipping point is the point where it’ll become widely known enough that, if not exactly “mainstream,” enough people will know what it means that it’ll amount, in practical terms, to the same thing.
The idea that people are seeing spread on social media and sending to me relates, in a parallel fashion, to the notion of “transage,” which, unlike “transrace,” has a real chance at succeeding. Trans-race is a struggling notion because race has such a sacred place in the leftist victim hierarchy, but the notion of age holds no such status. Thus, with no higher caste of victims on whose turf they would be stepping, there is a very real chance that this is going to work.
If it does work, the transformation will happen—as most leftist movements do—slowly, and then quite quickly. Out of nowhere, it’ll seemingly happen all at once.
This essay is my attempt to point it out in advance so that each of us can do what we can to stop it.
The first step is to never, never go along with the Left’s Orwellian language games.
THE LOCKDOWNS, MASKING, DISTANCING — IT WAS ALL A MISTAKE: Excess Deaths in Finland and Norway in 2022 Were Higher Than in Sweden in 2020.
Remember back in 2020 when Sweden was the bad boy of the Covid world? Placed firmly on the naughty step by the WHO, the EU and many national leaders, the Swedes bravely, or stubbornly, ploughed their own furrow. However, by the end of 2020, with the excess death rate in Sweden at 758 per million compared to the minuscule or negative rates in the ‘pin-up’ Nordic countries of Finland, Denmark and Norway (each of which followed WHO and EU orthodoxy) Sweden, and their Chief Epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, were firmly on the defensive.
How times change! Here we are in 2023, the pandemic rapidly disappearing in the rear-view mirror. But what’s this? The excess date rate in 2022 in both Finland and Norway was higher than Sweden’s in 2020.
Much more at the link, including data on the efficacy of the vaccines.
BLUE CITY BLUES: Seattle Is Running Out of Morgue Space Due to the Fentanyl Crisis.
January 23, 2023
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Did Colorado Man Try to Frame Taco Bell Workers by Eating Rat Poison?
I REMAIN DUBIOUS OF THESE BIG CASUALTY CLAIMS: Russia Lost 20,000 Troops in a Month, Ukraine Says.
Doubts about Kyiv’s claims aside, Russia’s losses have been certainly far higher than the Kremlin admits.
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Heroic Fox News Meteorologist Defends Elderly Man From Pack of Vicious Teens, Is Severely Beaten.
HEALTH: In-home saliva test detects cancer with 90% accuracy.
An AI-based home screening test to detect oral and throat cancers from saliva samples is now available in the United States with the hope of transforming oral and throat cancer detection.
Based on a technology approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a “breakthrough device,” the saliva test can detect early symptoms of oral and throat cancer with more than 90 percent accuracy.
Due to a lack of effective diagnostic tools, these cancers often go undiagnosed until they have reached an advanced stage, resulting in low survival rates.
This should help.
THE NEW ANTI-RACISM LOOKS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE THE OLD RACISM: School board member tweets: ‘Whiteness is so evil.’
Kesha Hamilton also works as a “diversity, equity and inclusion consultant” because of course she does.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Gov. Ron DeSantis Lowers the *BOOM* on Florida Teachers’ Unions. “Florida teachers’ unions are about to lose a major source of funding, along with a novel new regulation on administrator pay, if Gov. Ron DeSantis gets his way. It’s a big, bold move — and increasingly typical for America’s most aggressively conservative governor.”
Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Seattle officials intentionally ‘purged’ thousands of texts about 2020 ‘autonomous zone’ despite order not to.
THE LEFT ASTROTURFS, ALWAYS: Rebel News Furnishes Further Proof That Greta Thunberg Is a Child Actor on the World Stage.
CRISIS BY DESIGN: A major border city is on the brink of collapse because of Biden’s immigration policies, local official says.
Around 5 million migrants have crossed through the southern border into the U.S. since Biden took office, according to Customs and Border Protection. Border Patrol’s Yuma sector saw a 171% increase in migrant crossings between 2021 and 2022.
Meanwhile, 1.2 million illegal migrants have escaped Border Patrol since Biden took office, CBP sources told Fox News on Sunday.
“The problem that we’re foreseeing right now is there’s a couple of big waves coming,” a Yuma resident and fifth-generation farmer, Hank Auza, told Fox News. “Yuma can’t support that. It will overwhelm the system here.”
Mission: Accomplished.
NOW THAT’S AN INSURRECTION: Atlanta Mayor Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About Saturday’s Terrorism in the City. “It’s worth pointing out that Dickens is a Democrat, but he’s not following the woke crime rhetoric of many Democrat mayors.”
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Judge Temporarily Blocks Illinois Ban on Commonly Owned Semiautomatic Rifles.
BECAUSE OF COURSE: USA Today Pitching ‘Anti-Asian Hate’ Long After They Knew the Killer Was Asian. “Even if we cannot be sure an attack was racial in intent, it nonetheless can be racial in effect.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: China’s Reopening Comes With a $720 Billion Inflation Bomb.
There likely will be two forms of inflationary shock China will impart on the rest of the world this year.
First will come a negative impact on supply thanks to what amounts to non-mandatory lockdowns in China, with factories struggling to keep operations going as sick workers stay home.
Then comes the demand shock, when Chinese consumers resume spending in force, pushing up commodity prices. Weaker spending in the US has helped hold down commodity costs lately, but at some point Chinese imports will boost price pressures.
And don’t forget the export of Chinese demand, most prominently in the form of tourism.
“After three years of isolation, there’s plenty of pent-up demand for foreign travel. We expect outbound tourism to have recovered from virtually nothing to 75% of the pre-pandemic level by the end of 2023,” Sheana Yue, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note Friday.
International policymakers are already on the alert.
That last line isn’t nearly as comforting as the author intended.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Reminder—Democrats and Their Media Puppets Still Hate Cops. “The Democrats are angry again. Or still. They are a cranky lot, aren’t they? Give the amount of improper and/or illegal behavior they get away with consequence-free, you would think they’d be the most chipper lot in the country.”
THEY WEREN’T LOST; THEY WERE SHOWN THE DOOR: Elon Musk Reveals Twitter Lost 5,200 Employees. “In 2022, tech companies cut nearly 100,000 jobs, according to a recent report from outplacement services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. This was more than seven times the number of 2021, when 12,975 jobs were lost in the tech sector.”
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: As Ye Sow! Karma Swipes Left on Hit-and-Run Catch-and-Release Thug.
