US demands to sell TikTok are a political extortion scheme

Washington’s gangster-like attempts to take over the social media app reveal an inability to tolerate competition

The TikTok wars are heating up. The Biden administration has reportedly issued an ultimatum to the Chinese company Bytedance that it must sell the social media application or face a ban in the US.

TikTok has been subject to growing pressure from US politicians, who claim that the app, which was the most downloaded one in the world in 2022, is a growing national security risk, on account of its Chinese origin. Using the logic of guilt by association, it has been argued that TikTok could pass on its users’ data to the Chinese government. This has never been proven, directly or indirectly. It is a drummed-up ‘potential’ danger based on rampant paranoia that has engulfed Washington pertaining to all things Beijing.

In this, the Biden administration once again shows its incapability and unwillingness to challenge, restrain, or demonstrate reason against the worst elements of McCarthyism in American political circles. Instead, those elements are embraced for political gain. Now the administration wants to carry on where Trump failed and extort a sale of TikTok under the threat of a ban.

Washington’s posturing on TikTok is like that of a gangster: “You’ve got a nice social media app there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.” The “national security” fears are a superficial excuse that covers up the real reason behind all American decisions regarding Beijing: Washington’s inability to accept competition. Anything Chinese that is deemed to be successful or ‘outdo America’ is threatened, whether it’s political influence in the global arena or a successful market product.

The US has targeted a wide variety of Chinese companies with superfluous, opportunistic, and outright dishonest claims in order to quash their market shares. The most common line is the same one that is currently being weaponized against TikTok – about it being a “national security threat.” These claims always involve an alleged link to the Chinese government, and a claim that the given app, service or product is being used to spy on Americans, which is never proven. The claims are often deeply irrational, such as the recent allegations about surveillance through fridges or cargo cranes.

When the national security argument does not suffice, the Biden administration weaponizes the “human rights abuse” issue, as was done with Chinese solar panels, the availability of which Washington has sought to limit domestically as part of its ‘made in America’ green agenda, preferring home-made alternatives instead. The US, again without evidence, alleged the panels were manufactured with forced labor in the Xinjiang autonomous region. But the picture is nonetheless clear: it is always about market share and American dominance, and the outrage is manufactured as a way of creating support for sanctions.

But TikTok is different. It has established itself as the world’s number one social media app and is used by over 100 million Americans. It is so successful that to simply ban it outright would be a hugely unpopular decision. So on two occasions now the policy has been not to simply get rid of it instantly but to use political power to try to coerce the app’s Chinese owners into selling it to America. In other words, TikTok has been so good at swallowing up the US market that really China has no right to own it and an app such as that ought to be American.

Such a move contravenes everything the US professes to stand for. Although Facebook is banned in China, how would Washington and the media react to a demand by Beijing that Facebook sell its entire operation in China to a Chinese company for the right to operate in its market? The reaction would be explosive, and there would be accusations of Chinese ‘economic coercion’, ‘bullying’, abuse of state power, etc. The same goes here: the US is actively undermining the spirit of free enterprise, freedom of speech, and the rule of law by attempting to demand that a firm sell its entire business. For China to agree to this outcome would be nothing short of humiliation and acceptance of a place beneath the US. In other words, anything China makes that is good ought to be taken from it, and it has no right to its own success.

China should immediately block Bytedance from selling TikTok under any circumstances. If the US wants to ban it, let it just go ahead and do so, thus letting a generation of young people see the realities of the anti-China hysteria that the Biden administration is actively embracing. In that case, Biden should suffer the political fallout of that. America must not and cannot be allowed to win on this. Washington D.C’s arrogance is contemptible, but this is nothing short of robbery.

https://www.rt.com/news/573257-us-china-tiktok-demands/

Switzerland considering nationalizing floundering bank – Bloomberg

A partial or full government takeover of Credit Suisse is reportedly on the table should a proposed merger with rival UBS fail

The Swiss authorities are considering a “full or partial nationalization” of ailing banking giant Credit Suisse Group should a complicated proposed takeover by rival UBS Group fail to win approval from both shareholders and regulators, inside sources told Bloomberg on Sunday.

Zurich is “considering either taking over the bank in full or holding a significant equity stake” if the UBS deal should fall through “because of the complexities in arranging the deal and the short time frame involved,” the sources explained, adding that regulators are eager to conclude the matter before Asian markets open to prevent further erosion of public faith in the banking system.

The UBS deal, in which the megabank would have picked up Credit Suisse for a bargain-basement $1 billion, leaves the Swiss government on the hook if the acquisition fails to quell the instability in the system. If the bank’s credit default spread increases by 100 or more points, UBS can simply walk away from the deal, leaving Zurich and the regulators holding the bag. Nationalizing Credit Suisse would seemingly jump right to that eventuality.

The authorities have already reportedly agreed to a rewrite of Swiss banking laws to allow the companies to bypass the required shareholder vote and fast-track the merger.

Credit Suisse reportedly considers the valuation much too low, and the deal is also unpopular with the bank’s shareholders, as it would have paid them just CHF0.25 in UBS stock per share while their holdings were still worth CHF1.86 at the close of markets on Friday. The merger would cut thousands of jobs from the failing bank, particularly in its investment banking division.

UBS also wants protection from any pending legal cases or regulatory probes into its erstwhile rival that could result in fines or losses, though a source involved with the deal told the Financial Times it is unlikely to receive such immunity.

Credit Suisse has been hemorrhaging deposits for weeks amid a series of scandals and regulatory issues. As several US banking failures triggered massive systemic bank runs last week, outflows reached CHF10 billion per day and company shares lost a quarter of their value, necessitating a $54 billion loan from the Swiss National Bank. Regulators are concerned that this alone is not enough to shore up confidence in the financial system.

https://www.rt.com/news/573245-switzerland-nationalize-credit-suisse-ubs/

Hunter Biden sues ‘laptop from hell’ repair shop

The US president’s son accused the store owner of invading his privacy by distributing information found on his computer

Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, filed a countersuit on Friday against the owner of the Delaware laptop repair shop where he allegedly abandoned his ‘laptop from hell’, claiming invasion of privacy – but still not admitting the laptop is actually his.

Mac Shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac copied and shared Biden’s private data without his permission for personal and commercial gain, the countersuit claims, charging the computer repairman with six counts of invasion of privacy. Biden’s lawyers seek a jury trial, compensatory and punitive damages, and the return of any of Biden’s data still in the possession of Mac Isaac or anyone he shared it with.

Biden had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” regarding his computer’s contents for a full year after it was dropped at the Mac Shop, the countersuit argues, citing Delaware state law. While a repair authorization form “allegedly signed by Mr. Biden” agreed to relinquish any claims of loss or damage after 90 days, the filing points out that Mac Isaac initially said he didn’t know who had dropped the computer off.

Nor did Mac Isaac even wait the 90 days before digging into the data, according to his own book, in which he describes accessing footage of Biden engaged in sex acts and drug taking that made him “uncomfortable.”

Even if the laptop could be considered formally abandoned, the suit continues, Mac Isaac would technically only have possession of the computer itself, and not the data stored on it.

Mac Isaac sued Biden, along with former House Intelligence Committee chief Adam Schiff (D-California), CNN, and Politico, for defamation earlier this month.

Biden’s countersuit argues that the comments held up as defamatory – his public statements suggesting the incriminating data found on the “laptop from hell” could have been hacked or physically stolen by Russian agents – did not name the computer repair shop or its owner and therefore do not qualify as defamation.

The presidential scion also went on the attack against Rudy Giuliani, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, former Trump campaign director Steve Bannon, and several others, enlisting the Department of Justice’s National Security Division to hunt for violations of federal law in the named parties’ copying and sharing of “Biden’s personal computer data.”

In the meantime, multiple Biden family members and associates are under investigation by the House Oversight Committee for taking payments from Chinese companies in exchange for undefined services.

https://www.rt.com/news/573241-hunter-biden-countersues-laptop-repairman/

Horror: CBS Meteorologist Collapses on Live TV Broadcast (VIDEO)

A Los Angeles-based meteorologist suddenly collapsed on Saturday morning during a live TV broadcast.

Alissa Carlson Schwartz led the KCAL newscast with a weather update about the impending rain in Los Angeles. However, she passed out before she could even begin her report, TMZ reported.

“The video is absolutely horrifying … you see Carlson’s eyes roll to the back of her head, and she begins to lean forward on the desk she was at. Eventually, she completely collapses,” the outlet added.

When Nichelle Medina and Rachel Kim realized what was happening, they panicked immediately and cut to the commercial.

CBS Los Angeles Vice President and News Director Mike Dello Stritto issued a statement to TMZ hours after Carlson collapsed on camera.

“Our colleague Alissa Carlson became ill during our 7 AM newscast this morning. I want to thank her co-workers who took immediate action to comfort Alissa and call 911,” Stritto said.

“Alissa is being treated at the hospital right now. Hopefully we’ll know more shortly. In the meantime, Alissa will be in our thoughts and we’re praying for her to be feeling much better soon,” he added.

On her Facebook page, Carlson also provided a short update. Although, nothing has been said about what may have caused her to collapse.

“Thanks for all the texts, calls, and well wishes. I’m going to be okay!” she wrote.

According to TMZ, the meteorologist had a previous heart condition.

“Here’s the thing … Carlson had previously experienced a similar episode years ago — throwing up on set during a weather report when she was at a different station — and as a result … she was diagnosed with a leaky heart valve. That was back in 2014,” TMZ reported.

“Unclear if her previous diagnosis played any role in Saturday’s episode. We’ve reached out to KCAL for a statement … so far, no word back. They haven’t addressed this at all thus far,” it added.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/03/horror-cbs-meteorologist-collapses-on-live-tv-broadcast-video/

BREAKING: IS THIS ALL A SCAM? Now It Looks Like President Trump Will Not Be Arrested Tuesday

(Above – President Trump in Tulsa on Saturday at the NCAA Wrestling Championship)

Late Saturday night a report came out that maybe President Trump won’t be arrested on Tuesday.

The American people force-fed liberal garbage for another entire weekend. We’ll never get this time back.

The monsters on the now-communist left dropped the news on Saturday that they will be arresting President Trump on Tuesday.

Donald Trump announced on Saturday morning that he would be arrested on Tuesday, and the nation has been agog at the prospect of the Leftist establishment crossing the rubicon of arresting its principal opponent on flimsy charges and demonstrating before the entire world that the American republic is now the American banana republic, in which foes of the regime can expect the full weight of corrupt government authority pushing back against them for daring to dissent.

That’s about all that has come to light, as the relevant authorities are being quite closemouthed about this whole thing. Insider says that “a source with knowledge of the investigation” told them on Saturday night “there is one more witness.” The indictment is apparently not a certainty until this witness testifies.

But who is this witness? The Insider’s source wouldn’t say, and so all that we’re told is that “a separate source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told Insider that the witness is not Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s former CFO, who is serving a five-month sentence for admittedly masterminding a payroll tax-dodge scheme at the Trump Organization.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/03/breaking-its-all-bs-now-it-looks-like-president-trump-will-not-be-arrested-tuesday/

'Six smoking guns': Why doctor-turned-US-senator believes COVID-19 came from Wuhan lab

Long before key components of the intelligence community acknowledged they believed COVID-19 came from a lab leak, Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall had drawn a bull's-eye around the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Marshall, a doctor turned politician, argued early and often that the virus' emergence and genetic characteristics did not seem like those of a naturally evolving animal-to-human virus. But senators like him and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul were marginalized and even demeaned early on by detractors ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci to TV comedian Stephen Colbert.

Today, Marshall's analysis is gaining widespread acceptance, as the the FBI, House Intelligence Committee and Energy Department have all concluded the most likely source of the pandemic was a leak from the Wuhan research lab.

China and the lab continue to deny such allegations. But even Fauci, who pressed often to portray the virus as naturally evolving from wild animals, has begun to change his tune, saying he has an open mind while still suspecting natural evolution.

"A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild, maybe looking for different types of viruses in bats, got infected, went into a lab, and was being studied in a lab, and then came out of the lab," Fauci said last week on CNN. "But if that's the definition of lab leak, then that's still a natural occurrence.

"The other possibility is someone takes a virus from the environment that doesn't actually spread very well in humans, and manipulates it a bit, and accidentally it escapes or accidentally infects someone and then you get an outbreak."

Some researchers continue to press the idea of natural evolution, most recently last week with a suggestion the virus leapt from raccoon dogs.

In a wide-ranging interview last week, Marshall described the "six smoking guns" that led him to believe the virus emerged from an accident at the WIV, a lab in Wuhan closely tied to the Chinese military's Academy of Military Medical Sciences, which the State Department first identified in 2005 as a home to an illicit offensive bioweapons program run by Beijing.

1. The proximity of the lab to the initial outbreak: "There's only three labs in the world doing research on this type of virus," Marshall said, "and this virus breaks out right next to it, a thousand miles away from where that virus is supposed to be" located in a cave of bats. "That's smoking gun number one."

1. No intermediate species: After three years, Marshall noted, China is still unable to "show that there's an intermediate species" via which the virus passed in its leap from bats to humans. "I'm a biochemistry major, nuclear engineering, physician — I get the science, I've always got the science of it," Marshall said, explaining that the virus "should have jumped from bats to some type of an animal and then to humans."

1. The virus' protein spike: The protein spike's ability to extraordinarily and preferentially bind to human lung cells over bats points directly to genetic lab engineering, Marshall said. Researchers have found that a sequence of eight amino acids on a critical part of the virus' spike protein is identical to an amino acid sequence found in cells that line human airways.

1. Furin cleavage site: "The furin cleavage site would be the fourth smoking gun: a perfect junction at the S1/S2 part of this virus that the human lung cells just happened to have the cleaver in there to cleave it, so it dumps its genetic information into you," Marshall said.

Nobel laureate David Baltimore agrees. "When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus," he said, according to the New York Post.

"These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2," he said.

1. Database deletion: China deleted a key DNA database from its COVID research. In September 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology takes its entire genomic data bank offline, keeping it from the rest of the world just before the outbreak, Marshall said.

1. Lack of natural progenitor: No progenitor to COVID-19 has been found showing its natural ancestry. "We've never found that progenitor," the senator said. "There should be a cousin, a grandfather, an uncle of COVID-19. And we've never found it."

Marshall said the mathematical chance a virus evolved with these coincidences is astronomically small. "Your six coincidental events is one in a million each, and that just happened to work perfectly for this virus," he said.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/mondoctor-turned-us-senator-offers-six-smoking-guns-covid-19-came-covid

Drag Queen Who Said ‘Love Has No Age’ Gave ‘Story Time’ Lessons to 11-Year-Olds

A British comprehensive school has come under fire for hosting a controversial drag queen who has said that “love has no age” in lessons for 11-year-old children, in which he explained to the pupils the meaning of “queer identity”.

On Monday, the leading figure of the Drag Queen Story Hour UK organisation, 27-year-old Sab Samuel, who performs in drag under the stage name Aida H Dee, was invited to host a series of lessons for 11-year-old children at the Lewis School Pengam comprehensive school in Wales.

During the lessons, he reportedly explained to the young children how to “understand that queer is an identity”, what it’s like living as a gay person, and about the late American drag queen and gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, The Telegraph reported.

Demonstrating the confusion among the children, students reportedly asked Samuel if gay people could stop being gay, to which the drag queen replied “no”. Another allegedly asked: “Did you ever think about killing yourself?”

The appearance at the school sparked controversy after the Drag Queen Story Hour UK Twitter account reportedly posted and later deleted pictures of children watching the drag queen during the class.

Drag Queen Story Hour UK, which promotes its services for schoolchildren as young as five-years-old, has come under increasing scrutiny over the past year, with protests being staged across the country by activists and concerned parents, some of whom have accused the organisation of “grooming” children.

Sab Samuel, who claims to be autistic, has personally been criticised for fundraising for a rapist’s funeral, as well as previous social media posts in which he reportedly said that “love has no age” and another in which he shared a picture of a pubescent boy and an older man, with a cation claiming that gay clubs are “wild” as you can “meet both types and be told both are 23”.

Mr Samuel has attempted to defend his performances for children, saying that they may act as a “catalyst” for youngsters to start “living their true selves” and not experience the “horrendous mental health battle” that he claims to have endured as a child.

Commenting on the decision to host Samuel at the historic Lewis School Pengam, Shadow Education Minister Laura Anne Jones MS said that “it’s extremely concerning that this is happening in schools in Wales” and “highly inappropriate for him to be in this kind of environment”.

“The first question to ask is why is it necessary to have a drag queen in a school environment. There are far better and more appropriate role models out there,” she said.

“Our children deserve far better than to have a known highly sexualised and biased individual coming in to indoctrinate them and talk about delicate subjects, such as suicide and sexuality.”

However, while Wales is governed by the Labour Party, drag queens are still often invited to schools in neighbouring England, where Jones’s Conservative Party is responsible for education.

Meanwhile, Cathy Larkman of the Women’s Rights Network said: “Are we really telling young men that this is what it means to be gay? That it is fair game to represent women in this way?

“Schools, and our children, would be far better served by bringing in strong aspirational gay role models for their pupils, such as lesbian fire-fighters or gay barristers.”

Previous pressure campaigns have successfully shut down sexualised shows for children in the United Kingdom, including the “Family Sex Show“, which featured nude actors and taught children as young as five-years-old about masturbation and queerness.

Breitbart London revealed last year that a Labour Party-run council had hosted a performer dressed as a rainbow monkey with a giant dildo strapped to the crotch of his costume during a “Summer Reading Challenge” for children.

Following the backlash, the local council was forced to cut ties with the LGBT carnival troupe and issued an apology to parents.

More recently, a bondage-themed drag queen show for one and two-year-old babies and their mothers in London was forced to cancel future performances after intense public outrage earlier this month.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/03/19/drag-queen-who-said-love-has-no-age-gave-story-time-lessons-to-11-year-old-students/

NIAID website belies longtime director Fauci's claim to have urged 'open mind' on COVID origin

Institute's unattributed explainer insists "chimeric viruses" studied at Wuhan lab "were so far distant from an evolutionary standpoint from SARS-CoV-2 that they could not have possibly been the source of SARS-CoV-2 or the COVID-19 pandemic."

eeks after a second Department of Energy lab joined the FBI in asserting the lab-leak theory is the most likely explanation for COVID-19's emergence, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases still maintains that anyone who questions the natural-origin theory is rejecting science.

The National Institutes of Health component led by Anthony Fauci for four decades has not updated its page on "SARS-CoV-2 and NIAID-supported Bat Coronavirus Research" since its apparent creation 17 months ago.

Its finger-wagging insistence on natural origin contradicts Fauci's belated claim to have "stated repeatedly that we must keep an open mind" on the possibility of a lab leak, which he deemed a conspiracy theory from the start.

"This has been the public position of former NIAID Director Fauci for three years," Richard Ebright, lab director at Rutgers University's Waskman Institute of Microbiology and a vocal critic of Fauci, told Just the News when shown the unchanged NIAID page.

Fauci has not only made the assertion in May 11, July 24 and Nov. 4, 2021 Senate hearings "as part of his untruthful responses to questions from Senator Rand Paul about gain-of-function research and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research," Ebright wrote in an email, but in several interviews deployed the "scientifically meaningless" phrase "molecularly impossible."

The former NIAID director also muddied the waters in a recent CNN interview by declaring that even a lab leak would qualify as a "natural occurrence" if someone "in the wild" got infected, "went into a lab" to study viruses "and then came out of the lab."

The NIAID page was devised in response to questions about NIH's possible role in COVID's emergence through EcoHealth Alliance grants that funded Wuhan Institute of Virology research, and was last reviewed Oct. 20, 2021. Just the News could find no earlier archived versions.

The "chimeric viruses" the lab studied, a combination of the "well-characterized bat coronavirus" WIV1-CoV and "various spike proteins" from other bat viruses, "were so far distant from an evolutionary standpoint from SARS-CoV-2 that they could not have possibly been the source of SARS-CoV-2 or the COVID-19 pandemic," the unattributed explainer says.

"The body of the scientific data from this [federal] award including the bat coronavirus sequences published in the scientific literature and public databases makes this conclusion readily apparent to anyone with experience in and knowledge of virus phylogeny and evolutionary biology," it concludes.

Neither NIH nor NIAID responded to Just the News queries about the continuing unchanged page's implication that the FBI and Department of Energy are ignorant in their conclusions.

NIAID apparently issued the explainer the same day Lawrence Tabak, now NIH's acting director, told Congress the Wuhan researchers inadvertently enhanced a bat coronavirus. Ebright characterized this as an admission Tabak, Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins lied to Congress in their repeated denials of funding gain-of-function research.

Tabak passed the buck to EcoHealth for allegedly hiding the accident for years, but the nonprofit responded by providing hard evidence of its April 2018 submission disclosing the enhancement to the agency.

NIAID's explainer drew attention at the time from experts, including MIT Broad Institute adviser Alina Chan, who marveled at the agency's claim that "the -exact- viruses used in the -exact- experiments described in the literature" and disclosed in Freedom of Information Act documents didn't create SARS-CoV-2.

https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/awkward-faucis-agency-implies-fbi-department-energy-reject-science

Vatican embassy shut down in Central American nation

Nicaragua ordered the closure after Pope Francis compared its government to that of Nazi Germany

The Vatican's chargé d’affaires left Nicaragua on Friday, the Holy See said, following the closure of its embassy at the government’s request. Earlier this month, Pope Francis made harsh comments with respect to the Nicaraguan leadership over its treatment of the Catholic Church.

In an article published on Saturday, Vatican News reported that Monsignor Marcel Mbaye Diouf had moved to neighboring Costa Rica

On Monday, Nicaragua’s Foreign Ministry announced that it had suspended diplomatic relations with the Vatican, asking that it shut down its mission in the country.

Last week, the Holy See had expressed “deep concern about the upsurge of violence across the country, and the shrinking of space for dialogue and negotiations between authorities and civil society in recent years.”

The Vatican’s representatives called for the resumption of dialogue between various political forces in Nicaragua and the “return to a peaceful coexistence.”

Meanwhile, speaking to online outlet Infobae last Friday, Pope Francis himself suggested that Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is “mentally unbalanced.”

The pontiff went on to compare his government to the “1917 communist dictatorship, or the 1935 Hitlerite dictatorship.”

Francis cited the 26-year-long sentence handed down to Catholic Bishop Rolando Alvarez last month by a Nicaraguan court on charges of undermining the government, spreading false information, obstruction of functions and disobedience

He was among several hundred individuals who authorities in Managua branded as traitors and stripped of citizenship for “committing acts that undermine independence, sovereignty, and self-determination of the people, and for inciting violence, terrorism, and economic destabilization.”

While 222 of those people were subsequently deported to the US, Alvarez refused to board the plane and ended up behind bars.

Relations between the Catholic church and Nicaraguan government have been on a downward trajectory since mass protests began back in 2018.

Ortega was quick to blame the US involvement for the unrest, insisting that the opposition was attempting to stage a coup. His government subsequently banned all political rallies.

The Nicaraguan president described Catholic clergymen who had sheltered protesters or sympathized with them, as “terrorists,” with dozens of religious figures being jailed.

https://www.rt.com/news/573230-vatican-diplomatic-office-closed-nicaragua/