Elon Musk shows where X accounts reside, and who knew that a Gazan could suffer so horribly in the Netherlands.
Americans, for the most part, are very good and generous people. America as a country does more for the world's success and safety than any other country. On the one hand, being good-hearted is a virtue; on the other hand, being somewhat too naive can have its dangers. Sure, one does not want to suspect every person and every little thing. But, sometimes being too "simple" has its risks.
One thing that Americans often do not appreciate is that other people have agendas that include harming the U.S. Israel has banned the presence of Chinese cars on air force bases. A while back, England accused China of using its cars to listen to and record conversations of ministers who happened to be riding in such vehicles. Unless the CIA specifically asked one of the U.S. auto makers to wire up a specific car expected to be used by a given target, it would never dawn on us that American cars should be used as governmental eavesdropping tools against anyone—friends or foes. Yet. Chinese cars, cranes, drones, phones, and other electronic goods routinely send data back to China and could be shut off by the Chinese should an order come down from on high to do so. As Americans, we can't fathom this—Zenith TVs in the Soviet Union would be programmed to show a 24-hour loop of Ronald Reagan speeches until the USSR collapsed? We don't think that way, and we don't act that way. Good for us, but we have a blind spot.
We don't appreciate that Chinese students and scholars often come to U.S. institutions not only to learn but also to transmit important data back to China. Look at China's new aircraft carrier with its electromagnetic launch system. It took the U.S. a long time and a lot of money to create the technology and get it to work on the USS Gerald Ford. Suddenly, the Chinese after one generation of carriers have the same. A Harvard chemistry professor went to jail for not informing the U.S. government of his funding ties to the Chinese government. Again, as Americans, we would be shocked to learn of an American physics professor spending a year overseas acting as a U.S. agent—unless it was some one-off operation. But for the Chinese and others, everything they do is to strengthen themselves and weaken the U.S.
The same theme was recently reported about the Qataris spending tens of billions of dollars on U.S. universities and other institutions in order to push the Muslim Brotherhood and "weaken democracy" from within. These donations are not like those of some fortunate billionaire who has a new building in his family's name. The latter has no demands other than for a big spotlight on his name at night. The Qataris are actively trying to destroy the basic fabric of the United States in order to advance a Sharia state and end our constitutional republic.
And that brings us to X, formerly Twitter. Elon Musk and his gang pulled a fast one and, in one fell swoop, revealed the physical location of people banging out X postings. We quickly learned that many of the Groypers were in Pakistan, Bangladesh, or the like. Gazans giving us the blow-by-blow pain in their lives actually live in Poland, the Netherlands, Egypt, and other points outside of the Gaza Strip. These people, like the Chinese and Qataris, also have agendas: to cause infighting in the MAGA movement or stoke antisemitism by making claims that have no basis in reality. It is a huge public service that X has performed in alerting us where people actually live when they claim that IDF soldiers came by and kicked their dog—all the while as they lived in Canada. Much of the anti-American and antisemitic material on X (and ostensibly other platforms) is for the purpose of dividing the U.S., creating hatred toward Israel and Jews, and advancing Sharia and other non-Western interests.
Now, if we go back far enough, the U.S. and Western European countries also used to like to sell their political wares, especially behind the Soviet Union. American broadcasts into the USSR were meant to weaken the authorities and promote a life beyond the reaches of the drab lives of the citizens behind the Iron Curtain. And while countries may still promote themselves today, things have changed—and not solely because the Soviet Union collapsed so many years ago. Western countries no longer believe in the goods that they have to sell. One can see the evidence of the same by the endless illegal immigration that any self-respecting country would never tolerate. Catholic countries like Poland and Hungary, which experienced both the Nazis and the Communists, have zero interest in turning their countries over to people who hate them. England, France, and other Western countries make almost no effort to either stem the flow in or start the serious flow out—because they don't believe in the goodness of their countries or their former religious values. If they were proud Brits, Irish, and Dutch, they would have never accepted an endless stream of people who hate them and their way of life. And if they only woke up now, they would be throwing out 10,000 a month until they returned to something that nominally resembled their former countries. Yes, go look at videos of England and Italy from the 1990s. Those countries no longer exist and are nowhere on the horizon. And if they don't care about their own homefront, why should they bother trying to influence others?
Americans are such good people that they are often unaware that others, like the Chinese and Qataris, are actively trying to take advantage of them and weaken their country. That awesome DJI drone you bought your kid sends every video he makes back to China so that they can record where telephone poles, hydrants, and other infrastructure are located. Do you think that the Chinese are buying farmland near sensitive military installations because they want to grow corn? Do you think that they would allow the U.S. to buy some buildings overlooking a CCP submarine pen? Of course not. This merry-go-round only goes in one direction: for the benefit of America's enemies at the expense of the U.S. and its people.
So, on the one hand, you don't want a nation that distrusts everything and everyone. On the other hand, the X revelations show that a lot of bad actors want to mislead Americans and make them more politically divided. What can one do? Shut down X? Hardly. But one has to be very aware of who is making the message and try to figure out what they're trying to gain—and at whose expense.
While people are laughing about the real location of many X subscribers, there are very insidious consequences of this business. One false Gazan account was a frequent source for the Jew-hating BBC. So a guy living far away from the conflict reports as if he is under an Israeli tank. The BBC gobbles it up and spews its lies out to its millions of listeners, some percentage of whom subsequently hate Israel and Jews even more. One fellow recently spoke with some Irish fellows at a pub. One of the guys said that Hitler's only mistake was that he did not kill more Jews, which brought a laugh from his buddies. A recent report claims that the BBC "villified" Israel over Hamas 3:1. I would venture 30:1.
So, check X-locations to see where your news is coming from. Not all things online are as they claim.
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