Let’s talk about some information about TikTok and its parent company that few people seem to be mentioning right now.
Background: ByteDance is the China-based parent company of TikTok. ByteDance has several executives with direct connections to the CCP.
ByteDance executives have numerous connections directly to the Chinese Communist Party.
Key: China's 2017 National Intelligence Law mandates organizations like ByteDance and their employees must support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.
They are legally required to assist in any Chinese intelligence operation against Americans.
TikTok has spent years assuring Americans that American data is only stored in the U.S. and employees in China do not have access to it, but that has been exposed as a lie repeatedly.
Company recordings, documents, and admissions repeatedly have shown TikTok was lying.
After being confronted, TikTok eventually admitted they do keep US creator data in China despite previous denials. Then they admitted that employees at ByteDance in China do have access to U.S. data after receiving specific permissions.
There was a particularly revealing incident back in 2022 that required the FBI to get involved.
After several journalists started investigating ByteDance, employees in China used their TikTok data (which the company had previously claimed was inaccessible) to research and track those journalists to see if any ByteDance/TikTok employees were cooperating with them.
After being caught, ByteDance admitted to what had happened but claimed these were just rogue employees in China.
Several former ByteDance/TikTok employees have come forward to confirm the worst assumptions:
- Former US ByteDance engineering director, Yanato Yu, revealed in a lawsuit that the CCP maintained the ability to access TikTok’s U.S. data and that they used the application to promote and suppress specific content based on what the CCP preferred. The company was providing guidance on how to advance “core Communist values”
- Former TikTok marketing executive, Katie Puris, revealed in a lawsuit that she was forced to sign a loyalty pledge promising to promote China’s “socialist system” and “national interests.”
She also revealed TikTok has a dual reporting structure where they have bosses in the U.S. and China, but the major decisions about compensation, etc. were usually made by the management in China.
The U.S. management seemed to be just a way to make it look like a U.S. company on paper.
The evidence is overwhelming – this is far more an intelligence operation than a mere social media company. Only willful ignorance could deny it.
This explains why they'd rather threaten to shut down, forfeiting tens of billions of dollars, than relinquish control.
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It's worth getting into the details of the examples I cite here to demonstrate how CA governance has been a continuing disaster. They constantly pass progressive priorities and then spend years trying to undo the damage.
Action: CA passed AB5 in 2019. The bill would have essentially destroyed the gig economy and eliminated independent contractors by requiring them to be treated as and receive the benefits of full-time employees. Companies like Uber, DoorDash, etc., would all have been shut down because the leftists in charge didn't consider the consequences.
Response: The state then had to spend years and hundreds of millions of dollars fighting and undoing most of the law.
Voters stepped in with Proposition 22, which exempted app-based transportation and delivery drivers. $200 million was spent to pass that initiative.
Numerous lawsuits were filed, costing hundreds of millions, and many resulted in exemptions. AB 2257 also added numerous exemptions and changes to undo the damage.
They created a problem to appease progressive activists and then spent an insane amount of money trying to undo the damage.
Action: California initiated attempts to build a high-speed rail system in the early 2000s.
The initial estimate for the cost of a rail system that would connect LA to San Francisco and Sacramento was $33 billion. When the initial funding was approved in 2008, it was meant to be finished by 2020.
Response: Due to incompetence, California environmental regulations, construction issues, and a host of other mismanagement problems, all those initial estimates went out the window. It is now estimated that it will cost between $90-130 billion to complete. Now, they are refocusing on just building a small segment of the original route. The planned date for operation of that segment is now sometime between 2030-2033 (10-13 years after the whole thing was supposed to be done).
Action: California elected several District Attorneys in key cities who did not believe in incarcerating criminals or prosecuting most crimes. Key examples were George Gascón in LA, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, and Pamela Price in Alameda County.
Response: As a result of the policies these DAs put in place, crime rates exploded, and criminals acted with impunity. The inevitable consequence was outrage from those communities and large recall efforts. Boudin was successfully recalled in June 2022. They tried to recall Gascón in 2022 but couldn't make the ballot. A lot of prosecutors quit his office due to his refusal to pursue criminals, and some filed lawsuits claiming he retaliated against them for speaking out against his policies. Gascón lost his re-election bid with his opponent getting 61% of the vote after running on undoing most of his policies. Pamela Price was recalled in the November election with 62.9% of the vote. You can look up the many examples of how much damage these DAs did, but all of them ended up being voted out by over 60% of their respective voting bases.
Here is AFT President Randi Weingarten, the person many would argue was most responsible for keeping schools closed during Covid, cheering on this pick.
This stuff is legitimately hilarious because it shows how little these guys know about anything.
Putting aside that Sinwar’s main combat experience is just murdering innocent people who couldn’t fight back and he died while trying to run away after hiding like a rat in tunnels behind women, children, and hostages…
Netanyahu didn’t just serve in the IDF, he was a captain in an elite unit that was injured in actual combat several times. Including when he was shot in the shoulder during the raid to take out the Black September terrorists who hijacked flight 571. He was one of 16 commandos who dressed as airline mechanics and took out the hostage takers during that raid. Whatever else you think about him, he was a legit badass who has the medals and scars to prove it.
Everything is an alternate reality. This guy would be afraid of blood while the guy who hid behind women and children, and literally was caught with money and fake documents near the border, was a brave fighter.
As a side note, Netanyahu’s brother was later the sole Israeli military casualty of the Entebbe rescue.
A hundred Israeli commandos flew to Uganda to rescue passengers on another hijacked flight.
They rescued 102 passengers after taking out all of the terrorist hijackers and 45 Ugandan soldiers.
The Chuck Norris Delta Force movie was partially based on that operation.
So just to clarify because I think it’s important to note:
The indictment alleges that the founders of the company, Lauren Chen and her husband, intentionally deceived the influencers mentioned below (seemingly Dave Rubin and Tim Pool) regarding the source of the funding.
“Founder 1” is Lauren Chen, who gained these contacts when she worked for RT between March 2021 and Feb 2022.
When they were trying to sign the influencers who recognized some red flags, the fake person they sold as the main investor in France set up a meeting but mistakenly tried to show up to it at the Moscow time for meeting. Then googled the time in Paris.
There has been a lot of discussion about whether Israel, a country w a nearly 20% Arab population with full legal rights, is an "apartheid" state.
But the accusation often comes from supporters of surrounding states and territories. So let’s look at some of those for comparison:
Saudi Arabia:
Religious rights- Saudi legal system based on Sharia law. All forms of public religious worship outside Sunni Islam are considered illegal. Converting from Islam is punishable by death. Christians and Jews cannot build places of worship.
Women’s rights- Women must obtain permission from a male guardian for most actions.
LGBT- Homosexuality is a criminal offense.
Qatar:
Religious rights- Qatar’s legal system is based on Sharia law. All forms of public religious worship outside Islam are considered illegal. Building non-Muslim places of worship is severely restricted.
Women’s rights- Women must obtain permission from a male guardian for most actions.
So let's talk about a story that didn't get sufficient coverage from a few years ago and why it is still relevant today.
The below security footage likely saved Armaan Premjee's life.
In 2017, Premjee was a normal USC student who went out to the bar for a night of drinking. He met another USC student there. He went back to her dorm and slept with her. Something rather common at college campuses.
But after her friends discovered them and she got alcohol poisoning, the girl claimed she had no recollection of the events and claimed she must have been raped. The police arrested and charged Arman under the theory that the girl had been too drunk to consent.
Lucky for Armaan, there was security footage that showed the girl initiating the sexual encounter and signaling to her friend outside the bar that she wanted to have sex with him. After seeing the video, the judge in the case dismissed it.
But that’s not all there is to the story…
USC’s Office of Equity and Diversity did its own hearing & expelled Armaan despite the footage. In addition to ignoring the video, USC did not allow Armaan’s lawyer to speak at the hearing.
At the time, Obama-era Title IX rules which limited due process rights were in place.