On the heels of news that U.S. "intelligence" agencies are monitoring those with a negative views of health insurers comes the Tik Tok ban into effect as of today.
Ken Klippenstein's post, "Government Monitoring Those With 'Negative' Views of Health Insurance Companies," was met with many comments along the lines of: So basically everybody? That narrows it down.
A $20,000 a month cancer drug for $20 is just one of the astonishing facts shared by this TikTok refugee on Red Note aka 小红书 (xiao hong shu).
Fun fact: TikTok was not banned to suppress health care opinions, or housing or grocery price opinions. Per a leaked phone call back in March, the Anti Defamation League (ADL) pushed Congress to ban the Singapore-based platform in order to suppress news from Gaza.
Because Zionists are allegedly "defamed" -- though how anyone could make them look worse than they make themselves look at this point in history is mind-boggling.
Gazans returning to Jabalia after ceasefire announcement. Photograph: Omar al-Qattaa/AFPGetty Source: Irish Times
China hand Carl Zha commented on Twitter that the surge of mostly young U.S. users to RedNote, and the content they're posting there, seems to be, "The most awake and united I've ever seen this country."
Does the ADL want the people of the U.S. to be awake and united?
How about health insurance profiteers -- do they want the people of the U.S. to be awake and united?
Our corporate overlords and their front men are united. Shouldn't we be, too?
So many racist political cartoons about China on the interwebs it was hard to choose just one.
Admittedly I do not know if it was liberals who flagged my annual subscription fee to Lee Fang's substack (a whopping $60) and put a hold on my credit card with the explanation "Possible Fraudulent Activity Detected."
What I do know is that no such hold or warning has been triggered by my subscriptions to journalists with last names like Johnstone, Hedges, or even Taibbi.
This happened in the same week that the leader of a Democratic Party-aligned "peace" group in my state commented about an article on NATO I had shared: "The article you linked is incoherent (and look where it is published)."[emphasis mine]
Global Times published the piece on April 7 and included this introduction:
Editor's Note:
April 4, 2024, marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of NATO. As a product of the Cold War, NATO should have been disbanded, but over the years, it has served as a war machine and facilitated US hegemony. The Global Times talked to a number of experts and scholars to reveal how the US exploits NATO to serve its geopolitical purposes and how NATO destabilizes the world, exacerbates nuclear threats and brings confrontation to Asia.
In the second interview of the series, Global Times (GT) reporter Li Aixin talked to John Pang (Pang), a former Malaysian government official and a senior research fellow at Perak Academy, Malaysia. John said that having set Europe on fire with its aggressive enlargement, NATO proposes to bring their formula to Asia, against a far more powerful opponent - "It's an imbecile proposition."
Yikes! Both interviewer and interviewee have Chinese-sounding names. Who could possibly want to read and consider their opinions on geopolitical realities as the U.S. slouches toward WW3 with China?
Several times in the past week I've seen articles about the U.S. instigating a proxy war in the Pacific using the Philippines as their cat's paw. I've also read analysis from sources we're being trained to consider suspect. Here's a short list:
That last article debunked a New York Times report claiming that China's leaders
“are looking to nuclear weapons as not only a defensive shield, but as a potential sword — to intimidate and subjugate adversaries.” [The Union of Concerned Scientists] examined the evidence and found it did not support that claim.
Actually found a political cartoon about China that isn't racist!
The narrative management strategies employed by liberals around China are extremely familiar, because we have just been through two years of being told that the war in Ukraine started in 2022 all the while being scorned for reading anything published in Russia.
A thought police officer on a "peace" listserv based in Maine constantly attacks posts that deviate from U.S. State Department talking points while citing sources like the NYT, Washington Post, and CNN as beacons of truth. Uh huh.
Pot calling kettle black cartoon from the New York Times.
We've seen the recent claim that TikTok is being used to manipulate young people into hating Israel's genocide in Gaza, and China is at fault because, as Nancy Pelosi said on camera, if China's government can control the algorithms "we" are in big trouble. A backhanded admission that the U.S. controls the algorithms on Meta products, Twitter/X, YouTube, and search engines like Google.
This kind of bias makes you look stupid, folks. When Chew Shou Zi, CEO of TikTok, was attacked during a hearing in Congress for being Chinese he responded, "No, I'm Singaporean."
A reminder that resistance to Israel's war on Gaza did not start on October 7, 2023.
As I prepared to share documented resistance to Israel's genocide in Gaza I paused for Glenn Greenwald's explanation of why banning TikTok is suddenly a burning issue for Congress and the Biden administration. He notes corporate media reporting that October 7 was a game-changer:
The proposal gained momentum partly as a consequence of disquiet over the app’s handling of misinformation[sic] and antisemitic[sic] content following Hamas’s attack on Israel in October (UK capitalism rag The Economist on March 24).
On the other side of the pond, U.S. capitalism rag The Wall Street Journal said an analysis of TikTok data revealed:
far more views for videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags than those with pro-Israel hashtags..at times [the ratio of pro-Palestine to pro-Israel views] ran 69 to 1 (March 12)
Greenwald humorously added: "Remember when Nikki Haley said..that for every 18 minutes—or whatever it was—that you spend on TikTok, you become 32% more anti-Semitic?"
I did not remember that, but I would love to think that for every 18 minutes you spend reading this blog you become 32% more aware of resistance actions that corporate media has conspired to make invisible. Who knows, maybe you will even become 90% more likely to engage in resistance yourself!
This is the kind of success hard blockers dream of: materially disrupting the operations of a factory where they make the bombs dropped on Gaza. You have to get up early to do this sort of thing. Which makes for beautiful pictures once the sun comes up.
"Nine young supporters of Palestine chain themselves together and block I-95 in Richmond." Photo and caption by Phil Wilayto, Virginia Defender
Above is a close look at a different lockdown in progress, this one to shut down Interstate-95 in Virginia. Ten people were arrested and released after experiencing violence from Virginia State Police. NPR, local t.v. news and a local newspaper covered the action.
Why block I-95 for Gaza? I wanted to answer this common question by showing you the many war profiteers in Virginia using the interactive map created by Christian Sorensen for The Business of War, but guess what:
Sorenson notes: "There is nothing dangerous or illegal about taking public, official information (from military contracting announcements, corporate press releases, and corporate job postings) and transferring it to a map."
Don't feel up to locking down? Soft blocks using just our bodies probably can't shut down a weapons factory until our numbers are in the thousands, but they can force those ignoring their country's role in funding genocide to pay attention.
Organizer Joshua Caldwell said about 300 protesters gathered at [San Francisco] airport's International Terminal at 8 a.m. They blocked traffic outside and security lanes inside and held up banners and signs calling for an end to the bombing campaign that the United Nations says has claimed more than 30,000 lives.. nobody was arrested
Wait, did I read that right -- zero arrests? This is becoming a common tactic for suppressing information about resistance actions. (Throttling social media is another.) This action got a fair amount of mainstream media coverage anyway because SFO is a big international airport. Other protests that involve blocking streets? Not so much.
Even soft blocks take physical stamina and solidarity planning. What if you're just a kid? Or elderly and infirm or can't afford time off or to lose your job? Do what you can, where you can, inspired by these Girl Scouts! From Mondoweiss:
A Girl Scout Troop in Missouri recently broke away from the organization after it made legal threats against the group.
For the Girl Scouts’ “Agents of Change” capstone project, a St. Louis county troop decided to make and sell bracelets to raise money for children in Gaza. The Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri said the move was “political” and instructed them to shut down the fundraiser..
Despite breaking away from the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri, the group is staying together, and their bracelet campaign has continued.
It would take me the rest of the day to share all the resistance actions I'm aware of, and I don't even go on TikTok. Here's one from my inbox, spotted in tiny Blue Hill, Maine this weekend:
Want to protest at an intersection where thousands will see you? Join us in Rockland, Maine next weekend!
And if any of this inspires you to join in, let me hear from you!
I'm going to make reference to a racist text that deeply influenced my youthful thinking about societies and how they die. Gone With the Wind was around my house and I probably read it when I was 10 or so, seeing the movie only years later. Did I notice that the Black characters only existed to be servants to the white protagonists, for instance, protecting them from the "bad" i.e. not servile Black people? No, I did not. Nowadays, it would be impossible not to notice that aspect of this story published in the 1930's.
My takeaway from GWTW was something different: the deep denial of citizens of an empire in decline. Confederate adherence to their cause led to blindness and hubris; they still believed they were winning long after they were sure to lose. And the failure to adapt meant literal starvation for many. I'm sure I discussed the book with my parents and they no doubt encouraged me to see the heroine as someone who was able to look reality in the face, adapt, and survive. My mother called the people who failed to adapt dinosaurs.
Possibly my parents sensed that they were preparing me for a future they could but dimly imagine. Which brings us to today.
I can think of no more iconic artifact of the rise of Asia and the fall of the U.S. and Europe as world influencers than this brief exchange between Singaporean Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, and Richard Hudson, a congressman from North Carolina.
Link to video if embedded version doesn't work for you: https://youtu.be/IhvEU-6bnrM
Congressman Hudson and the other members of the subcommittee contemplating a ban on TikTok clearly think they are playing hardball with China. Here's another gem making the rounds under the title, "I'm Singaporean."
Link to video if embedded version doesn't work for you: https://youtu.be/AvsIogVNs7w
Youthful comics have had a field day making fun of the hearing, while tech commentators have written about how a Congress concerned with egregious data mining should be focusing on all social media platforms, and maybe even on passing laws to protect data privacy such as other countries have.
Meanwhile, and irrespective of this nonsense, China brokered the resumption of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia and possibly an end to proxy war in Syria. China also proposed a peace plan to end the proxy war in Ukraine.
China announced it will launch 13,000 low earth orbit satellites this summer to reserve space in that critical communications field. (Satellites are used by U.S./NATO to target Russian-ethic regions in eastern Ukraine and Russian military forces.)
China, Russia, and India are the C, R, and I in BRICS, the economic powerhouse that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Algeria, Argentina, Mexico, and Nigerianow want to join. Negotiations to use a currency other than the dollar to settle energy purchases between nations are well underway, with some saying it will occur as soon as August.
The United Nations Security Council, never quite the independent international body it was claimed to be when given a home in New York City, held a vote on Russia's resolution to investigate the Nord Stream bombing. The UN's press department reported:
By a vote of 3 in favour (Brazil, China, Russian Federation) to none against, with 12 abstentions, the Council rejected the draft resolution, owing to a lack of sufficient votes in favour.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning questioned on Tuesday why the US is hesitant about investigating an incident that seriously threatens international peace and security, when it is so enthusiastic about conducting so-called investigations on developing countries.
"It is playing double standards. What is the US afraid of? We expect early progress from relevant investigations so that the world knows what truly happened to hold those responsible accountable," she said at a news conference in Beijing.
The U.S. empire is in for a rude awakening but it seems to be dreaming of its glory days as it barrels full speed ahead toward a world war it cannot win. That's why I fear that the dinosaurs will unleash their nuclear weapons when they finally realize their days are numbered.
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