Rightways: US threats

Showing posts with label US threats. Show all posts

Thursday, March 2, 2023

When White House cracks down on TikTok, what is US afraid of?

The US, with around 750 military bases across the globe, warships in most oceans, which is waging a proxy war, stirring up conflicts here and there, is now vehemently making a fuss about so-called "threats" it is confronting: Earlier this month, it was balloons, and now, it is TikTok.

The White House on Monday gave government agencies 30 days to ensure they do not have short-video platform TikTok on federal devices and systems, Reuters reported on the same day. In December last year, US Congress voted to bar federal employees from using the video app on government-owned devices. Now, US President Joe Biden officially tossed out the deadline.

The decision is as unreasonable as Biden's order to shoot down balloons with missiles. It is a typical irrational action generated by security anxiety stemming from a kind of mental illness, Shen Yi, an international relations expert from Fudan University, told the Global Times.

If the move reveals anything, it is that the US has gone hysterical in its anti-China stance while its relevant decisions have gone far beyond reality. TikTok has been trying to demonstrate its global nature. However, in the eyes of American elites, being born in China is an "original sin."

Over the past years, TikTok has been questioned on whether the Chinese government has access to US user data; whether its content is censored by China; whether its stored US user data is based on US soil … However, after TikTok appropriately responded and met all these requirements, the US still claims the app is a "national security threat."

In 2020, then president Donald Trump even tried to mandate that ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, strike a deal to sell TikTok's US operations. In other words, the US government has been attempting to harm this globally leading short-video platform which was not born in the US, using various excuses.

The latest ban is aimed at government devices and will only affect a small portion of TikTok's users in the US, yet some observers believe that, the US is actually attempting to fan the flames of a wider call to ban the app throughout the country. On the global arena, some US allies have already followed suit. Also on Monday, Canada announced a ban on TikTok from government-issued devices. Last week, the European Commission and Council of the EU, EU's two biggest policy-making institutions, banned staff from using the app.

It is a mystery why the US and its Western allies are afraid of TikTok, when there is no evidence to prove its "danger," and when it is basically a purely entertainment platform, which people can download out of their own free will. Against the backdrop, banning TikTok is absurd. And the US is behaving like the emperor in the folktale "The Emperor's New Clothes." Don't ask why he has no clothes, he is just being unreasonable and even mentally ill, Shen said.

"How unsure of itself can the world's top superpower be to fear a young people's favorite app like that?" Mao Ning, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, asked at a daily briefing on Tuesday, when responding to the White House's TikTok ban.

It cannot be ruled out that the Biden administration needs some scores to demonstrate its capability to keep staying in the White House and protect so-called US national security, observers noted. Moreover, reports show that TikTok was the most-downloaded app worldwide. That being said, killing TikTok means US internet companies will have one less competitor.

US Federal Chief Information Security Officer Chris DeRusha said this latest decision on TikTok is "part of the Administration's ongoing commitment to securing our digital infrastructure and protecting the American people's security and privacy."

US officials keep talking about "American people's security and privacy," do they mean it? As George Galloway, a six-term British parliamentarian, tweeted, "It's American intelligence, not Chinese, which is coming through your back door, your front door and all of your windows."

Worse, it was speculated that Washington's balloon frenzy earlier in February has a lot to do with covering up the scoop over what US did behind Nord Stream bombing. There is also reason to suspect the hype of TikTok is aimed at distracting people from Ohio derailment and chemical spill. Thanks to social media platforms like TikTok, short videos can be uploaded anytime and anywhere. And they helped to push the story into the public when traditional mainstream media covered their eyes. US' crumbling railway system is shocking, and US government's attempt to cover up the toxic train has been nakedly exposed to the world.

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Monday, August 20, 2012

Julian Assange condemns WikiLeaks witch-hunt

Assange calls for an end to the 'witch-hunt'

Julian Assange emerges from Ecuador's London embassy to call on the US to end its 'witch-hunt' against WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadorean embassy to ask US President Barack Obama to make his country "do the right thing" and "renounce its witch-hunt against WikiLeaks".

"The United States must dissolve its FBI investigation," he said. "The United States must vow that it will not seek to prosecute … our staff or our supporters. The US must pledge before the world that it will not pursue journalists for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful.

To my family and to my children, who have been denied their father; forgive me. We will be reunited soon.

"There must be no more foolish talk about prosecution of media organisations, be they WikiLeaks or The New York Times."

"End the witch-hunt" ... WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange makes a statement from the balcony of the Ecuador embassy in London. Photo: Reuters

This was the closest Mr Assange came to asking that the US promise not to seek his extradition should he go to Sweden to face questioning over claims of sexual misconduct. He has not been charged and denies the allegations.

Earlier, one of his spokesmen had said that Mr Assange would consider accepting extradition to Sweden if the US would publicly pledge not to seek his extradition.

Mr Assange and WikiLeaks outraged American authorities with the publication of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures after his statement to the media. Photo: AP

The WikiLeaks founder has been sheltering in the Ecuadorean embassy since June because he fears that if the UK sends him to Sweden, the Swedes might hand him over to America and he may face a potential death penalty related to espionage allegations.

Wearing a shirt and tie and sporting a new crew-cut, Mr Assange demanded that the US return to its "revolutionary values" before it lurched over a precipice into which it dragged "all of us": "A dangerous and oppressive world in which journalists fall silent under the threat of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark”.

The US “war on whistleblowers” must end, he said, making a forceful call for the release of Bradley Manning, an American soldier detained over espionage claims for allegedly leaking material to WikiLeaks.

To loud cheers from dozens of supporters - held back by more than 40 police - Mr Assange said the United Nations had found that Mr Manning had endured months of "torturous detention" at Quantico and was about to have his 815^th day in jail without trial.

“The regular maximum is 120 days,” Mr Assange said, calling Mr Manning "the world’s foremost political prisoner".

He issued a series of thank yous, including “to the people of the US, the UK, Sweden and Australia who have supported me even when their governments have not”.

He thanked all the South American nations that have rallied behind Ecuador in outrage over a letter that has been seen as a threat by the British Foreign Office to use police to storm the Ecuadorean embassy to retrieve Assange: “Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela”.

Mr Assange also thanked supporters who had come out for a vigil in the dark last Wednesday night when police entered the building that houses the embassy.

"Inside this embassy after dark I could hear teams of police swarming up through the building through its internal fire escape". But he said he knew supporters were watching outside.

He finished with, "To my family and to my children, who have been denied their father; forgive me. We will be reunited soon".

South American nations on Sunday backed Ecuador's decision to grant asylum to Mr Assange, urging dialogue to end the crisis pitting Quito against London.

Foreign ministers of the Union of South American Nations, meeting in Ecuador's biggest city Guayaquil, expressed "solidarity" with Quito and urged the parties "to pursue dialogue in search of a mutually acceptable solution," according to a joint statement.

Karen Kissane, London with AFP Newscribe : get free news in real time

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Sunday, August 12, 2012

US threat: superpower gun barrels pivot east

As US election fever sizzles, pressure mounts to spread the militarist mindset deeper and wider.

African agenda: Clinton (right) visiting a clinic in a suburb of Cape Town. — Reuters

THE heavy-duty globetrotting of Hillary Clinton as US Secretary of State was bound to take in Africa sooner or later. Now it has done so with as much gusto and relish as a new colonial carve-up of the continent.

This was the “dark continent” before it was “discovered” by the white man, before the African could succumb to Western maladies from various illnesses to the “structural adjustments” imposed by Western-controlled multilateral lending agencies.

And Africa today is the continent that Washington sees China moving into. How could the world’s sole superpower let that go unchallenged, particularly when the moves come from the world’s fastest rising power?

China is seeking natural resources for its growth, scouring the earth from South America to Africa and anywhere else with potential. The US, coming from behind in Africa, wants to get even and then pip China at the post.

Just what that means in real policy terms, or how that can benefit US interests, would have to be determined later.

So Clinton goes to nine countries in 11 days, posing with Nelson Mandela in South Africa and holding hands around campfires and singing Kumbaya from Benin, Ghana, Kenya and Malawi to Nigeria, Senegal, South Sudan and Uganda.

All of it made for good diplomacy and even better feel-good US news copy. However, some analysts observe that the US just does not have the funds to fulfil its African pledges.

Predictably, Washington denied this was in competition with China over Africa. And like all such official denials, it was as good an unofficial confirmation as any.

Clinton’s African agenda was formally based on the White House white paper “US Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa” produced just weeks before. This policy document aims to strengthen democracy, boost growth, promote peace and security, and encourage development.

Clinton asserted that the US had had a long history in Africa (before China), and it had been there for all the right and good reasons. But whether China is in the picture or not, US policymakers have a problem in credibly claiming both altruism and a long history in Africa.

Such claims of early US engagements typically neglect mentioning the slave trade from the late 15th century. This notorious denial of human rights through massive human trafficking involved the kidnap of countless African men in their prime over centuries by Europeans who sold them to Americans, setting back African development for generations.

Abraham Lincoln reputedly fought a civil war to end slavery only in the 19th century. That showed how embedded slavery had become in the New World, requiring a civil war to abolish.

Yet even this stain on Western history was predated by several decades by Admiral Zheng He’s three voyages to Africa in the early 15th century. These were Chinese trading missions that came to barter goods, not to extract vital human resources in a criminal fashion.

Later, Ronald Reagan’s administration infamously did business with the international pariah state of apartheid South Africa, while branding Mandela a terrorist leader. When questioned, Reagan called it “constructive engagement” to excuse his collaboration with a racist Pretoria.

Other US experiences elsewhere in Africa resulted in gross corruption and denial of human rights. From Rwanda and Somalia through Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo), Equatorial Guinea and Ethiopia to Egypt and Libya today, the positive gains are not as rosy as they have been advertised.

More lately, the Obama administration overturned 10 years of hard work internationally by abruptly dumping a global arms trade treaty at the United Nations. Both legal and illegal arms and munitions supplies have devastated the developing world, notably Africa, which continues to lose thousands of lives and more than US$18bil (RM56bil) a year through armed conflict.

Clinton’s asides on China’s African presence come amid general criticism of Beijing’s modus operandi when doing business in Africa. China stands accused of not placing conditions on its African hosts before proceeding to deal with them.

To those intent on demonising China, however, Beijing can never win: it will be condemned whatever it does or does not do. If China were to impose political conditions on business deals, those who now complain it is not doing so will again be the first to complain.

There is a historical record for reference: once, an ideologically rampant China offered inducements to factions in developing countries to support their domestic communist movements.

Beijing has wisely refrained from such preconditions. Should China still offer such inducements, if only to make its own Communist Party or government look good?

Would it really be better if China exerted pressure on its trading partners or investment destinations to do what it considers important for its own values and objectives? To do so would be China’s equivalent of imposing US conditions on the developing world.

Some countries have also been guilty of offering “aid programmes” that hire their nationals as expatriates in the country supposedly aided. In contrast, China is said to hire African nationals for work on infrastructure projects it builds in Africa.

This provides local employment, while the infrastructure once built will remain in those countries to produce a multiplier effect for development through improved transportation for trade, investment, tourism and the distribution of educational opportunities and healthcare facilities.

Unlike the US variety, Chinese aid, trade and investment come with no strings attached, no crippling IMF or World Bank conditions, no military industrial complex supplying weapons to one side or the other, and no promises or threats of destabilisation, subversion, invasion, occupation, war or “regime change”. And Western critics pick on Beijing for that.

African analysts cite these as reasons why Africans will welcome China’s presence more than a competing US presence. China’s business deals come without the extra baggage of self-righteous preachiness and ideologically loaded value judgments.

Like the rest of the Third World, Africa may want to get as much as possible from both China and the US. So, in practice, it will not be a question of one suitor or the other.

But if Africa on its own is such a compelling case for renewed US interest, with China not a factor at all as officially claimed, why did Washington take so long to get interested? US policymakers must know that the official narrative of a rising Africa is not quite accurate.

To a degree, the Obama-Clinton act over Africa has also resulted from Mitt Romney’s presidential challenge. A leading US specialist on China, Prof David Shambaugh, finds that the Romney campaign is building a foreign policy team based largely on George W. Bush advisers.

This team sees China as a “global competitor” over Africa, and which despite some diplomatic platitudes in the preface, is relying heavily on greater military power. Lethal fallout may yet land in other regions from a superpower tottering in West Asia through teetering in South Asia on the way to Obama’s “pivot” in East Asia.

US presidential campaigns traditionally focus on domestic issues, but China and Africa are now generating a buzz among Americans online. Obama may also win a second term, but Romney’s influence on the campaign trail and Republican pressure in Congress may yet set the tone for US-China relations to come, to impact inevitably on East Asia as a whole.