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In this mailing:
* Gordon G. Chang: TikTok: America's Do-Or-Die Moment with China
* Amir Taheri: The French Model: Another Crisis


** TikTok: America's Do-Or-Die Moment with China ([link removed])
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by Gordon G. Chang • April 2, 2023 at 5:00 am
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* Congress is now considering the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats That Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, sponsored by Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John Thune (R-S.D.). The RESTRICT Act, as the proposed legislation is known, creates a framework for the secretary of commerce to review foreign-linked social media platforms and to take action if necessary.
* The legislation, intended to target TikTok, is controversial and being criticized as overbroad.
* Xi is swiftly erecting totalitarian controls inside China, which he undoubtedly will extend to America and the rest of the world if he gets the opportunity. In short, the threat to the U.S. is existential.
* The threat is also urgent because China's ambitious ruler is making preparations for war. His regime in fact declared a "people's war" on America, which is the Communist Party's way of justifying a strike on the U.S.
* There are, consequently, critical factors that legitimize curbs that would otherwise infringe First Amendment protections.
* TikTok, after all, is one of Xi's tools to take down the United States. Radio Free Asia reported in August 2020 that a People's Liberation Army intelligence unit, working out of the now-closed Houston consulate, was using big data to identify Americans likely to participate in Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests and then created and sent them "tailor-made" videos on how to organize riots. Related reporting reveals the videos were distributed by TikTok.
* China's app can access each keystroke of every user and even their location at any moment. "It is very much like giving them the keys to the kingdom," said Evan Greer of Fight for the Future, a privacy group, to Fox Business.
* "Everything is seen in China," a member of TikTok's Trust and Safety Department said. A "Beijing-based engineer" known as "Master Admin" had "access to everything."
* TikTok had said it never shared user data with the Chinese government and would not do so. The BuzzFeed reporting revealed this assurance and similar ones to the federal government were false.
* The Communist Party has used TikTok to, among other things, glorify drug use, push critical race theory, and amplify Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine. The CCP does not allow the Chinese people to use the app. TikTok's twin site in China, Douyin, promotes patriotic themes.
* China's regime has a dagger, in the form of TikTok, pointed at the heart of the United States, and Americans have to figure out a way to make sure the Communist Party can no longer use it, First Amendment or no First Amendment. "The Constitution," as is often said, "is not a suicide pact."

China's regime has a dagger, in the form of TikTok, pointed at the heart of the United States, and Americans have to figure out a way to make sure the Communist Party can no longer use it, First Amendment or no First Amendment. "The Constitution," as is often said, "is not a suicide pact." (Photo by Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Adi Robertson, The Verge's senior tech and policy editor, makes an impassioned plea to not ban TikTok, China's popular video-sharing app, on free speech grounds. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), speaking on the floor of the Senate on March 29, also raised First Amendment objections to a proposed TikTok prohibition.

Nonetheless, it is time to either ban TikTok or force the sale of all its shares to American parties. The American owners must also control all the app's algorithms, in particular, the algorithms curating content. If Beijing does not permit such a sale, the federal government should expropriate TikTok.

"The First Amendment includes a right for citizens to receive information—even, in fact, foreign propaganda," Robertson correctly writes in "The TikTok Ban Is a Betrayal of the Open Internet." "And banning TikTok would affect not only speech from TikTok but also the speech of users on the platform, who could see their videos made inaccessible."

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** The French Model: Another Crisis ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • April 2, 2023 at 4:00 am
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* Macron was reminded of one of the key facts of the French political life, according to which governing means rolling a boulder up the hill only to see it roll down again at double the speed. The best you can do is to dodge the boulder and light a Gitane for consolation.
* Classical revolutions such as the first big one in 18th century France were led by the semi-privileged in the name of the underprivileged and against the highly privileged. Today's pseudo-revolutions in France are supported by the semi-privileged who represent the majority of the population while the underprivileged suffer in silence and the highly privileged watch things with a mixture of amusement and disapproval.
* Both [French President Emanuel Macron and former President Giscard d'Estaing] would have done well to study British Prime Minister James Callaghan's description of democracy as "a system that functions on the edge of un-governability."

Pictured: French President Emmanuel Macron, in Versailles, on March 31, 2023. (Photo by Ludovic Marin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

It was almost a year ago when France's President Emmanuel Macron won re-election for a second and final term. In doing so, he broke a curse that had kicked his two immediate predecessors out of the Élysée Palace, providing an occasion for celebration. La Marseillaise was played and the champagne bottle smashed, but the ship didn't launch.

Macron had mused about lofty goals: reforming the ailing European Union, providing leadership for Western democracies, defeating Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, creating a European army and, last but not least, reforming the state pension laws that threaten to bankrupt the republic within the next decade or two.

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