Programming note: Join Mark this evening for another episode of his nightly audio adventure: Mystery in White, a "Christmas crime story" by Jefferson Farjeon. It airs right here at SteynOnline at 7pm North American Eastern - which is midnight Greenwich Mean Time. Tomorrow, Wednesday, he'll be here for our midweek Clubland Q&A taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm GMT/9pm Central European. Hope you can swing by.
~There has been a development in the Ukraine war - that is, if you trust the source:
North Korean troops have been killed fighting Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk border region, the US has said.
These would be the first reported casualties since it emerged in October that North Korea had sent around 10,000 troops to reinforce Russia's war effort.
Ukraine's military intelligence agency, the GUR, has also said at least 30 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded in fighting over the weekend.
The BBC has not independently verified the claims.
Independently verifying US claims is a tricky business, at least for the next month or so. Over the weekend, Donald J Trump tweeted out a picture of former New Jersey governor Chris Christie having multiple McDonald's take-out orders delivered by drone. Funny, although not to a media determined to learn nothing since November 5th. Actual headline from The Independent:
Trump called out for 'fat-shaming' Chris Christie with AI image of him eating McDonald's surrounded by drones
As the incoming president, 47 has presumably been briefed on the real source of the recent drone activity in the Garden State, so-called because there are drones hovering all over your garden. What I took from Trump's joke was that there is no truth to the approved rumours that "foreign actors" operating from an Iranian "mothership" are behind the phenomenon. So, whatever the eventual explanation, it is safe to do Chris Christie jokes - although it would have been funnier with Krispy Kreme take-out bags.
What have we learned these last five years? When the Covid got going, there were two schools of thought:
a) it was a pangolin gone rogue; or
b) it escaped from a lab.
The latter theory arose because it seemed a bit too convenient that, of all the wet markets in China, it should arise at one next door to an "institute of virology". And besides, the ChiComs lie about everything.
Ah, but so does the Government of the United States. We now know not only that the "lab leak" is the most likely explanation, but also that it came from a Chinese lab where Fauci was running off-the-books gain-of-function research funded by American tax dollars. Which is why in 2020 the "public health" bigshots went to such lengths to kill the lab-leak theory and the reputations of any of its proponents. It is a not unreasonable inference for those who take the official WHO death stats with a straight face that millions of people are dead because of Fauci's "research". Which is why he and his pals are being prepped for the most expansive pardons ever issued.
So, after Covid, the same expert class moved on to Ukraine. Two years ago, three of the four Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Europe mysteriously exploded. The governments of Denmark, Sweden and Germany launched investigations. The Scandinavians folded theirs without reaching any conclusions. The third staggered on, and eventually issued a European Arrest Warrant for a Ukrainian national called "Volodymyr Z". No, not that Volodymyr Z - although this second Volodymr Z has since fled from the EU to Ukraine, where the first Volodymr Z is disinclined to lift a finger to help extradite him to his valued "ally".
So far the Hungarian prime minister is the only western leader to state the obvious - although you would be hard put to find a Euro-PM (including the outgoing German chancellor) who disagreed with him:
We let the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline go unchallenged; Germany itself let an act of terrorism against its own property – which was obviously carried out under US direction – go unchallenged, and we are not saying a word about it, we are not investigating it, we do not want to clarify it, we do not want to raise it in a legal context...
So the American Deep State offshores gain-of-function to CIA cutouts in China and offshores European pipeline-destruction to Ukrainians offshore. Twenty years ago (here it comes) I wrote in America Alone (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available, etc, etc):
Not long after September 11th I said, just as an aside, that these days whenever something goofy turns up on the news chances are it involves some fellow called Mohammed.
And that's still true if we're talking about raped schoolgirls and stabbed kindergartners. But, when "something goofy" turns up on a geopolitical scale, chances are the fingerprints are not Mohammed's but a corrupt and out-of-control Deep State.
Those drones? Don't worry about the "foreign actors"; it's the domestic actors.
Good luck, Trump. You'll need it.
~We thank you for all your kind comments these last grisly months - and we thank especially all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club, and those old members who've signed up a chum for a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Both make excellent Christmas presents. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in the years ahead.