TikTok - Sore America loser playing foul

Washington is demanding that the app’s Chinese owners sell their stake, company representatives have said

FILE PHOTO. The TikTok logo is displayed outside a TikTok office in Culver City, California. © Getty Images / Mario Tama


Washington has urged TikTok’s Chinese owners to divest their stakes in the popular video app or face a potential US-wide ban, representatives of ByteDance – the company behind the platform – told various media outlets on Wednesday.

TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told the Wall Street Journal, which first broke the story, that the Beijing-based company had received the ultimatum from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS). It’s part of the US Treasury Department and is officially tasked with overseeing national security risks in cross-border investments.

ByteDance, which was founded in Beijing in 2012, has pointed out that 60% of its shares are currently owned by global investors, 20% by employees, and 20% by its founders, who also carry outsize voting rights.  RT

The evil American Empire is showing its fangs everywhere, fighting wars, agitating for wars, sanctions, daylight robbery, inciting riots and destabilising countries, selling arms, nuclear proliferation etc etc. After losing many sectors in the tech war to China, failing to cripple Huawei, losing in the chip war, it is not giving up. Now it is going after TikTok, a very popular and easy to use software for people to express themselves in very creative ways. Again the evil Americans are waving the security threat flag to demonise TikTok where every young Americans are using it and enjoying every bit of it. No, this is not allowed. 

Other than the security threat, the evil American Administration is angry that the users are spending too much time on TikTok, but ok to spend time on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc and other American software. What a load of shit!

Where is the freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom to live and play in this fake democracy but an authoritarian evil Empire, curtailing the freedom of its own people. And this curb in freedom is extended to other AngloSaxon tribe countries. Ban TikTok because the Americans are sour losers. When they can't compete, break it. This is what the evil American Empire is best at.

Are they going to stop using Chinese made cranes in their ports? Are they going to stop selling Chinese consumer goods and toys in Walmarts? Where is World Trade Organisation to stop these violations of free trade? Where are the champions of freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of choice, freedom to play?

More than a hundred million Americans are happily using TikTok. Are they going to take this abusive authoritarian ruling without a fight? Would they be demonstrating in the streets for their freedom, individual rights? And this is America, supposedly the home of democracy. Where is democracy, where is human rights, where is freedom?

Everything is politicised, everything is weaponised. America is now an authoritarian state, an evil Empire, not a democracy. The power of the deep state is eating up everyone and everything in America, the biggest fake democracy.

It was easy for the Americans to destroy and rob Japanese and European countries. But China is a different kettle of fish. All the lies and abuse of power would not make any difference. The more the Americans try to suppress China, China would only grow stronger.  TikTok would survive just like Huawei and gets stronger by the day. Good stuff would always be in demand and no lies can bring it down.

PS. One good thing about using TikTok is that the American govt cannot spy on you. This is actually the main reason why they want to ban it or steal/rob it from its owners.

Xi Putin coming meeting will be a game changer in the Ukraine War

President Xi's impending visit to Moscow to meet with Putin will be one important event that will be closely watched by the rest of the world. Xi's visit to Russia is sure to come up with very important geopolitical outcome for the China/Russia alliance. It could be the final nail in the coffin for the de-dollarisation move, the coup de grace against the US$ hegemony. Xi's overseas visit in the past had never been done for irrelevant matters.

China's impending supply of lethal weapons to Russia will likely be linked to USA's sale of weapons to Taiwan, which will probably be discussed between Xi and Putin. China is prepared to face USA sanctions by providing arms to Russia, a move in tandem with what the USA is providing to Taiwan. China has to tell the USA that it can also play the same game.

China knows such sanctions, if they go ahead with weapons supply to Russia, cannot be avoided, whether weapons supply to Russia is actually carried out or not, since the USA side is hyping up the possibility. The USA is going all out to target China in every conceivable way. The chips sanctions, the tech sanctions and sanctions on Chinese apps are already on after all.

The USA can extend sanctions to Chinese products, which if done, will cause inflation to skyrocket in the USA. Understandably, the raising of interest rates by the Fed had failed to tame inflation in the USA and the Fed has no more ammunition to bring down inflation without destroying the economy. Any move by way of sanctions on China will inevitably do more harm to the USA, and not just harming Chinese manufacturing. It will in effect be more damaging on the USA than all the sanctions on Russia, which by the way only harmed Europe more than the USA.

 

Anonymous 

Asean in the eyes of the West - Pathetic and shallow

 

Photo cropped from an article by Ravi Velloor in the ST on 23 Feb 23. The caricature depicting Asean as a bunch of mindless men behaving like hungry third world kids is quite demeaning and condescending. Is Asean really that hungry and silly to rush for a hamburger offered by the Americans, like the $150m pittance, and fighting for it in glee?

Velloor's article in a way repeats the western narrative and wishful thinking that China is now in decline and the USA is back in favour. This kind of American propaganda trying to deceive the world that the failing American Empire is winning the war to remain as the number one hegemon is common in all American and western media, as well as the media of American crony states. 

Is America really winning the war of dominance? Is China really losing it because of a few sanctions and the chip and technology war? Just because of 3 years of Covid lockdown, self imposed by China, would this change the fate of China's rise? Don't dismiss the fact that China is now the number one trading partner of more than 120 countries in the world and now with the opening up, ex Covid, the Chinese factories are going to run full steam ahead while the Americans are sucked in the self destructive war in Ukraine, with its factories ramping more bullets and killer machine.

And not to forget, Asean is not the silly children of yesteryears that would run after a white tourist throwing sweets at them. Asean is now an economic power in its own right and does not need little pieces of crumbs to get by. As long as the region and the world at large remains peaceful, leaving aside the war in Europe, Asean's economies would do well without needing charity from the Americans.

The only way for the Americans to squeeze and control Asean is to blackmail Asean leaders on some indiscretion to do their bidding. This can only happen to one or two Asean leaders but not all the Asean leaders. The only thing the Americans can offer to Asean is war and military hardware that Asean did not want. 

Poor Marcos is now in a very difficult position and being dragged into the anti China camp by the Americans, just a few days after he became the President. What did the Americans have on him that led to this volte face in his foreign polices vis a vis China and the USA?

Which other Asean leader is going to be the next Marcos Jr to be arm twisted by the Americans to go against China?

Indonesia and Malaysia not happy with nuclear subs in the region? But some Asean members are very happy.  Perhaps Indonesia and Malaysia should join the party and ask the Americans to sell nuclear subs to them also. Caveat, the answer likely to be no even if both would want to be subsets of AUKUS, because they are not whites but Muslim states.

America turning Australia into another nuclear armed Israel in the region

If the intention is not to eventually turn those nuclear powered submarines into nuclear armed submarines, it will be stupid to believe that AUKUS had to be created to go all out to antagonise the French, by even cancelling their submarine deal, and ruffling the feathers of Indonesia and Malaysia, which to the USA will just be collateral damage. With Australia holding all the cards and given the emperor's edit to rule this region, other ASEAN countries will just be turned into countries of peripheral importance to the USA.

They have to generate the China threat to support the need to proliferate the nuclear threat discreetly, by playing the China card to justify the nuclearisation of Australia. This may lead to Australia being given nuclear missiles eventually to confront China, using the same tactic they attempted in Ukraine. Theoratically, what threat is China posing to Australia, being more than 4,600 miles away. It is not even within the South China Sea regional zone of dispute. The USA/UK's main intention is to cultivate Australia as their officially deputised sheriff in Asia, step by step.

And why openly supplying nuclear powered submarines for Australia, and not Japan. South Korea or the Philippines, countries which will be much closer and more suitable to threaten China with nuclear submarines? The Anglo Saxon Whites never trust the Japs, South Koreans, Pinoys or coloured people, or trust them enough to supply them with nuclear submarines. The USA and UK only trust their own Anglo Saxon Whites, countries willingly allowing themselves to be sacrificed with their undying support just to uphold the US hegemony, or White Supremacy. Losing that hegemony is not in their common interest, even if they have to go back to the stone age.

Anonymous 

The Americans missed the boat in containing China's rise

India made a wrong and silly move, by broadcasting its superpower intentions too early. Even Germany and Japan, not having announced any semblance of their superpower intentions, but just competing too well on economic grounds, were taken down by the USA from competing with them. All done without a whimper by Germany and Japan, obediently and under the thumb of the USA.

China is choosing to differ in bowing to the USA. China and Russia is providing a challenge to the USA for the rest of world to follow, making China as a pure competitor to challenge the USA that John Joseph Mearsheimer is talking about.

China kept its intention close to its chest for probably three decades, without resorting to loud announcements, and content to bid for time with just upgrading its military defence capabilities, lifting the bulk of its population out of poverty in the interim, enhancing its manufacturing capabilities to compete successfully globally, investing and improving its domestic infrastructure, expanding its soft power across all of Africa, Latin America, Middle East and Asia successfully with its BRI projects and infrastructure developments overseas.

China used the decades well and fruitfully, instead of opting for confrontation and wasting its resources. The trade surpluses with the USA had been well recycled to the chagrin of the USA. It mitigated the importance of the IMF and World Bank.

Even then, the USA, after taking its eyes away from China towards the Middle East and its preooccupation with terrorism, soon realised, knew and feared belatedly what China is doing and became nervous and paranoid when China overtook them in GDP (PPP) and also closing in fast on its nominal GDP as well. Even cutting off China from many technologies and researh over many fields failed to stop China's progress. And so the demonisation, hyping up of threats to instil fear in countries around China, forming alliances to contain China in technology, possibly the only one area still left for them to exploit to keep China down.

But the rise of BRICS is posing yet another big problem for the USA going forward. This is too big and wide a grouping to contain and kept down. And BRICS is growing, with lately, even Mexico touted as a super economy, joining. They can try to ignore the BRICS threat as overblown at their own peril, just like the China rising from the ashes to become a geo-political hot potato blowing up in their face of the USA.

BRICS will carry the de-dollaristion move to another level. That is basically the movement that will be the straw to break the camel's back in de-dollarisation if it succeeds, and it must not fail, in order to provide the world with an alternative to the US$ hegemony and the SWIFT control.

 Anonymous