Twenty-one year old Jack Teixeira, a guardsman in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, has been arrested and accused of revealing classified national defense information. According to The Guardian (not affiliated with the Massachusetts Air National Guard as far as I know) Teixeira took secret documents home, photographed them and posted them on 4chan and Telegram internet sites.
It’s a big deal because of this: Releasing classified information reveals what we (or, as it is, the U.S. government) know, and by revealing what we know it also endangers those who supply us with information about our adversaries. When such information becomes public, the source of that information can be in grave danger (or, as Jack Nicholson said “is there any other kind?”) and, in some cases, be executed almost immediately. What Jack Teixeira apparently doesn’t understand is that revealing information puts our sources at risk. Certain information can come from very limited sources, and when that information in U.S. hands becomes public, those who had access to said information and revealed it to the U.S. are in questioned and, in many cases, executed or imprisoned for a very long time.
Jack Teixeira has no clue that what he finds to be just about troop movements and other “harmless” information is actually from someone who is risking life and limb to provide the U.S. with that information. Entire programs can be scrapped because of advanced knowledge. Many lives can be lost because of knowledge of military operations in advance, such as something like the specific plans that the Ukraine is planning a spring offensive.
Just sitting there in his safe Massachusetts home, Teixeira apparently had no idea of the kind of jeopardy he might be creating for Ukrainian soldiers; he was just out to impress his friends on social media. Many of the reports note that Teixeira is “just twenty-one” implying a certain amount of naiveté about youth and poor decisions. Of course, if anyone dies because of Teixeira’s revelations, the blood is on his hands, just as much as if he was operating a heavy object while intoxicated.
The thread to discovering Teixeira’s federal crime moved from Thug Shaker Central to Discord and other social media which I will leave to my reader’s discretion to discover, if only because I find these sources, for the most part, an incredible waste of time and effort.
Thanks to the internet, Teixeira was able to distribute the classified information all over the world because it is, after all, the World Wide Web.
Thanks to the internet, Teixeira was able to distribute the classified information all over the world because it is, after all, the World Wide Web. After the initial praise for all the great things the internet could provide, the internet has turned into a sordid collection of liars and thieves. Some of the internet liars have been revealing “predictions” of imminent doom. Liars make the best promises, or, in recent times, the most dire of predictions. China is now teaming up with Russia. The truth is, China is teaming up with anyone who has something that they need. You don’t see Russia, (which will be financially bankrupt quite soon) China, North Korea, or Iran (guess what they all have in common) helping any nation who doesn’t have something that they want or need. Bullies don’t team up with wimps.
Now for those who say China will attack the U.S. While the Chinese are beefing up their military, the doomsayers are predicting that China will invade the U.S. Of course, even with the largest army in the world, China would still have to cross the Pacific, giving the U.S. ample time to see just how far the largest army in the world has been trained to swim. In the event of a nuclear exchange, it would leave both countries devastated. It is well known that China has constantly sought technical information from the U.S. for the past few decades, and shows no sign of backing off this mission. But foreign information just isn’t enough for China; it spends billions on spying on its own people. That’s the thing about crooks, they see the evil in themselves and believe it in others as well.
To quote The China Project: “Through data from apps, surveillance cameras, facial and voice recognition technology, and artificial intelligence, backed by massive state investment and support, China is now seeking ‘to create the most perfect surveillance state the world has ever seen.’” In just this last year 2022 to 2023, over 116,000 Chinese have left their country and sought refuge in other countries, many in the U.S. All of the national projects that China has initiated, from The One-Hundred Flowers Campaign, to The Great Leap Forward, to the Proletariat Cultural Revolution, have ended up dismal failures costing China millions of citizens. I expect no less from the new brilliant ideas that China’s current leaders have in mind. Socialist countries have histories of dismal failures with ghastly impacts upon their populations, and Xi Jinping has yet to impress me as anything more than a bureaucrat who has seized power by political manipulation.
China’s president, Xi Jinping has manipulated the system so that he will remain president for the rest of his life. Anyone with a thumbnail’s understanding of history knows how “president for life” turns out. “President for life” means dictator, and China will become a dictator’s republic instead of a people’s republic. “Smaller nations are experimenting with de-dollarization while China and India are pushing to internationalize their currencies for trade settlement after the U.S. and Europe cut Russian banks from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT.” From Mathew Burgess, Yahoo! Finance April 18, 2023.
There are apparently a lot of doomsayers claiming that the U.S. dollar will become worthless. Without the slightest bit of shame, those same people want you to purchase gold or cryptocurrencies from them. The U.S. dollar is used worldwide, from the second biggest economy in the world to the second largest military power in the world. Yes, the U.S. owes a lot of money (the federal deficit is in the trillions) but what other currency would replace it? The Chinese regularly and deliberately vary the value of the yuan, their official currency, so that their deficits and trade imbalances appear less than they are in reality. This manipulation of the yuan makes the Chinese currency a bad bet when dealing in international trade. Yes, the yuan is used, but it is far from the best currency to use, because there is a high probability that the value of your yuan could fall in value and leave you with far less than what you had at the start.
The dollar represents the strongest and most stable currency in the world, and if the doomsayers had any legitimacy at all, you would see trillions of dollars leaving the largest financial markets in the world, and that isn’t happening. The trend here is even if money moves from one investment to another in the U.S. markets, you aren’t seeing billions moving offshore. The money managers must know something, because loyalty in investments is not the road to financial success. I can tell you that from first-hand experience.
