90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Cruz Previews Assault on Big Tech

Republican senator Ted Cruz (Texas) said the leaders of Facebook and Twitter will answer to Congress for their suppression of the New York Post‘s reporting about Hunter Biden before Election Day.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will be called upon "to explain to the committee and to the American people why Twitter is abusing its market power to interfere in the election and censor media reporting of evidence suggesting Joe Biden's personal corruption concerning two foreign nations," Cruz told reporters during a conference call Monday afternoon.

Cruz did not give a specific date for the appearances before the Senate Judiciary Committee but said it would occur before Nov. 3 because of the urgency of the issue. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will also be called upon to appear.

"This poses the single greatest threat to free speech in America today. It poses the single greatest threat to democracy in America today," Cruz said.

Twitter and Facebook suppressed the circulation of the New York Post‘s reporting about a trove of emails and documents from a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden. Facebook suppressed the story's distribution on the platform's news feeds while it was being fact-checked, and Twitter did not allow individual users to tweet or send the stories via direct message for a period of time. Twitter also did not allow a follow-up story from the Post to be circulated by individual users.

Dorsey said the platform was wrong to block the story, and Twitter also updated its "hacked materials" policy to allow press coverage of hackings in the future.

But the policy change was too little, too late for Cruz. He said tech corporations could be engaged in "potentially serious campaign finance violations" by censoring stories harmful to the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.

"Even left-wing Democratic journalists who hate President Trump should pause for a second and ask, ‘...

Destroying The Leftist Narrative...

Do the Chinese Own Joe Biden?

Americans will need to come to grips with a mounting, deadly serious crisis. The Democrat nominee for the presidency appears saturated with corruption, and worse -- yes, there’s a worse here -- he’s compromised himself to foreign powers, one of which -- the People’s Republic of China (PRC) -- is rightly regarded as an enemy of the U.S. Sly Vlad Putin and whoever runs the Ukraine owns Joe Biden, too. Russia and the Ukraine having the goods on Biden is bad enough, but China is the U.S.’s principal rival for global dominance. The blackmailing of a President Joe Biden is a chilling prospect. Biden as president imperils the nation in ways never experienced before.

What does this mean to the Sino-American rivalry? It means that with Biden blackmailed and in the White House, the Chinese may never fire a shot to gain hegemony over the U.S. -- the domination that tyrant Xi Jingping dreams about.

Did you know that in the last week the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group was deployed to the South China Sea? Let’s examine this development and then tie it in to the growing Biden uber-scandal.

Per USNI News, October 15, 2020:

The carrier strike group] is now operating in the South China Sea for the third time as part of its current underway period. Meanwhile, a destroyer made a transit of the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday.

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) and its strike group passed through the Strait of Malacca and entered the South China Sea on Monday, according to ship spotters. Accompanying the carrier was guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam (CG-54) and destroyer USS Halsey (DDG-97).

Why has the U.S. sent a strike group back for a third time recently? More from the USNI News report:

USS Barry (DDG-52) passed through the strait on Wednesday, a first for a U.S. warship since Aug. 31. “The ship’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” read the statement. [italics added]

While the U.S. under Donald Trump’s leadership has routinely contested the PRC’s fraudulent claim to the South China Sea as its territorial waters, the strike group’s deployment involves much more this time. It targets recent PRC threats to Taiwan. President Trump intends selling advanced weapon systems to Taiwan as a counter to mounting Chinese threats. If war comes with the PRC, sooner rather than later, Taiwan is the flashpoint.

From the Washington Post, October 12, 2020:

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- With tensions soaring in the Taiwan Strait, China responded to Taiwanese overtures for dialogue by releasing new footage showing a large-scale military exercise simulating an invasion and a purported confession from a Taiwanese businessman held captive in China on spying charges.

The double-barreled release by the influential China Central Television late Saturday and Sunday signaled a hard line from Beijing on the same weekend that Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen offered conciliatory remarks expressing a desire to hold talks as fears grow that China's increasing threats toward Taiwan could spill over into military action.

And, finally, this from the Post report: