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From The Verge:
President Trump has signed a new executive order which will block all transactions with Bytedance, TikTok's parent corporation, in an effort to "address the national emergency with respect to the information and communication technology supply chain."
The move comes after months of escalating tensions, which saw Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others at the White House warn that TikTok presented a national security threat because of its Chinese ownership. Microsoft is currently in talks to acquire portions of the app, aimed to be complete by September 15th.
A parallel order banned transactions with WeChat, a popular texting app in China that maintains a small user base in the US.
[...] The executive branch has the power to levy sanctions against individuals and corporations by placing them on the "entity list," as the US did against Huawei and ZTE last year. But such sanctions are typically put in place by the Commerce Department rather than the White House, and subject to a specific rule-making procedure that seems to have been short-circuited by the surprise executive order.
See also: Tencent stock plummets after Trump announces plan to ban WeChat in the US
Previously:
(2020-08-01) President Trump Threatens TikTok Ban, Microsoft Considers Buying TikTok's U.S. Operations[Updated 2]
(2020-07-07) Reddit and LinkedIn Stop Copying iPhone Clipboard Contents
(2020-06-30) India Bans TikTok, WeChat, and Other Chinese-Owned Apps
(2020-06-28) TikTok and 53 Other iOS Apps Still Snoop Your Sensitive Clipboard Data
(2019-12-27) Investigation Claims United Arab Emirates Uses The ToTok App To Spy
(2019-10-26) Lawmakers Ask US Intelligence to Assess If TikTok is a Security Threat
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday August 07 2020, @02:29PM (33 children)
COVID-19, the national debt, poverty... You know, real stuff that real people care about.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @02:43PM (26 children)
Yeah, because the last dozen POTUS's did nothing to prevent what was warned about long ago.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @02:47PM
Of course the President is not responsible. Why should he be? Someone else created the mess, he's just here to do his thang, get some ratings, you know.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday August 07 2020, @02:49PM (7 children)
That's not the point. It's not because the last dozen POTUSes were useless that this one has to follow suit.
They all come up with pretend "emergencies" to distract people from the real issues - particularly just before the elections. It's really sad to watch...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday August 07 2020, @03:53PM (6 children)
It's really sad to watch...
It is indeed... But, from the other side, it's all very profitable.
Maybe, some day, people might take the initiative and turn their backs. Until then, whaddya gonna do?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday August 07 2020, @06:17PM (5 children)
What I've been doing for the past 40 years: stay at home on voting day.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday August 07 2020, @06:25PM
You know you're the majority, right?
You could flip the whole thing upside down if all of you get together and vote for Oprah.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday August 07 2020, @10:33PM (3 children)
You are part of the problem then. You can claim your vote doesn't matter, that the political parties don't represent you, etc. They don't have to, because too many people don't vote. Nothing would shake up the system more than to have close to 100% turnout of voters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @01:19AM (2 children)
I disagree. Nothing would change if the viable "choices" remained a right-leaning corporate Democrat or a far-right corporate Republican.
What would change things is if the largest portion of votes went to third parties, regardless of how large the pool of voters is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @01:56PM
If the nonvoters showed up, any candidate could be viable.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday August 14 2020, @10:54PM
The reason they are the only choices is because so many voters stay home. They have no reason to care about the "people". We couldn't change things in a single election, and perhaps even in several elections, but if everyone always showed up to vote it would be noticed, and the established parties would become less and less viable as time goes on.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @03:33PM (9 children)
But most of the last dozen POTUSes did do things to get ready for this. For example, CDC was pretty well funded and mostly de-politicized (like any good science) after the SARS scare, which luckily never really spread to USA.
Trump is the one (iirc) who cut their budget and then started to cut CDC off at the knees because he didn't like what they were saying.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @03:46PM (8 children)
The CDC/WHO was never designed or prepared for this shit. Bill Gates stated those exact facts during Obamas fuckture of POTUS. Trump got stuck with the fuckery leftovers of Democrats.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 07 2020, @04:52PM (7 children)
Sure buddy, the Centers for Disease Control was totally never designed to control diseases!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @05:09PM (6 children)
CDC was started by the Rockefellers to support their investments in drug companies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @05:34PM (5 children)
Yeah, dumb-asses think the CDC/WHO is there to protect citizens from nasty diseases. They are only cops that come in after something starts, the difference being they don't use a gun or a knee and instead just watch you die.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 07 2020, @06:11PM (4 children)
Nope, they tried to get there before the outbreak but Trump fired them all.
U.S. axed CDC expert job in China months before virus outbreak [reuters.com]
U.S. slashed CDC staff inside China prior to coronavirus outbreak [reuters.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @08:12PM (3 children)
of course deathmonkey loves the CDC! the professional liars who run interference for big pharma. what a stupid fucking slave.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 07 2020, @08:31PM (2 children)
You're right, I do love the doctors who are busy trying to save both of our asses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @09:25PM (1 child)
That is why they lied to you and told you not to wear a mask when it mattered in Feb/Mar?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @06:56PM
You mean asked people to stop hoarding N95 masks so doctors would have their needed PPE?
Try and be more fucking stupid ya douche nozzle.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday August 07 2020, @07:26PM (4 children)
Remember a few years ago when millions of Americans got Ebola and tens of thousands died from it? Oh wait, that didn't happen, and it's because the previous president had listened to his Surgeon General and CDC director and other public health officials, and had organized a pandemic response system to specifically contain pandemics. And the current administration, shortly after taking office, disbanded that system and scrapped its plans because the previous president was a Democrat.
This kind of predictable failure has happened before, for exactly the same reason: Remember when thousands of Americans died to terrorist attack in the 1990's? No, you don't, because the Clinton administration had set up a system for preventing future terrorist attacks in response to the first attempt at destroying the World Trade Center back in 1993. Then the George W Bush administration came in, scrapped that anti-terrorism system because Clinton was a Democrat so he must be wrong about everything, and after less than a year the bad guys succeeded in their goals.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 07 2020, @08:33PM (1 child)
If Clinton were president right now the Republicans would be onto hearing #25 investigating the tragic deaths of 300 Americans to COVID-19.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @07:15AM
Trump has had 40,000 Benghazis and counting. That's worth a hearing or two, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @12:30AM
Good grief, none of this is true.
Ebola didn't spread anywhere outside of Africa because it is basically not contagious at all. Only direct contact with infected bodily fluids can reliably spread that virus. In rural Africa even basic sanitation is not always easy to come by, and care for the sick (and burial of the dead) often falls to family members rather than trained professionals. Not only was Ebola not a threat outside of Africa, it became much more manageable within Africa once the Africans learned to recognize it and be take appropriate measures.
Please cite any anti-terrorist agencies that were impeded by action of G. W. Bush or his administration. What actually happened is that Clinton knew exactly where Osama bin Laden was, but decided to do nothing; took no meaningful action against al-Qaida or Afghanistan after the first WTC bombing, and no meaningful action against them after the USS Cole attack. Despite multiple warnings that al-Qaida had both the capability and intent of attacking the United States, he did nothing.
When it came to scrapping systems that worked, though, Clinton scrapped the Iraqi sanctions and weapons inspections that would have prevented the second Gulf War.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @01:22AM
> And the current administration, shortly after taking office, disbanded that system and scrapped its plans because the previous president was a Democrat.
And the current administration, shortly after taking office, disbanded that system and scrapped its plans because the previous president was black/i?.
TIFTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @08:15PM (1 child)
He's mad that they won't purchase enough soybeans and stuff before the election to help him in the farm belts. It will be interesting to see what China does because it is probably way more in their interest to keep a useful idiot in power than to have to deal with a real president. Do they very publicly capitulate (but in private, not really) so he can show strength before the election, or do they say "fuck it"? You ought to know that his ego and insecurities are so great that he is so damn easy to manipulate.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 07 2020, @08:35PM
On the plus side, now that China is on Team Biden [npr.org], maybe Republicans will do something to secure our elections.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @03:37PM (5 children)
Oh, he has been addressing the other real emergencies alright. Just not the same way that you want him to address them. Politics, you know.
And the government is big, just because this is a news article about foreign policies, you're saying it's not dealing with domestic problems? Are you going to post in a COVID-19 news article that he's not addressing national debt and poverty? On a national debt stories, you'll say something about COVID-19 and poverty? Then on a poverty news article....
Plus, there's real people across the Pacific Ocean too. The real people (in Hong Kong and East Turkestan) are in real emergencies and are hoping the international communities will band together and stand up to Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They are cheering on any sanctions that any countries will put on China.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 07 2020, @06:13PM
Competently?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday August 07 2020, @07:14PM (3 children)
You're right: I don't want a president who arranges to have American citizens die because he doesn't like the governor of the territory or state that they're dying in. And that's been a consistent pattern of this administration.
This was evident as early as 2017, with wildly different responses to hurricanes hitting Texas and Puerto Rico [politico.com]. A few months ago, the federal government has been credibly accused of stealing necessary medical supplies from Democratic-controlled states to give them to Republican-controlled states, a decision that killed a number of doctors and nurses as well as patients who were forced to go without those supplies. And just last week, we learned that the federal government torpedoed its own plan to contain Covid-19 because the outbreaks were worst in Democratic-controlled states.
And no, Democratic administrations do not pull that kind of crap. Obama hated Republican Florida governor Rick Scott, but didn't withhold federal disaster aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, for example.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @08:23PM (2 children)
I pay $1000 or more a year in taxes because of him because I happen to live in one of those "coastal elite" (aka "blue") states and that fuckwad and his cronies capped the amount of property taxes I can deduct. And that was done purely out of spite. The Republican Party, who will STILL tell you that they are against oppressive taxes with a straight face, tax me on taxes that I pay. But somehow they'll argue I'm not double-taxed.
I hope everybody on every ticket in November with "(R)" next to their name gets voted out. They need to take such a huge beating that there is a real reckoning and the house is burned down and rebuilt on real political principles (not those you completely abandon and adopt the compete opposite of in only a matter of a few months).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @08:33PM (1 child)
Why should us living in more fiscally sensible places subsidize your choice to live in a "Democrat paradise", with free money and services for anyone who can make it across the border, along with people who have given up legitimate work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @10:32PM
We'll gladly take you guys off of the welfare money we send your way. It is simply astounding that the same people who take more money from Washington than they contribute complain about anyone's fiscal situation. The red flyover states are the absolute worst welfare queens there ever were. I'd LOVE to seem how their budgets are if they had to actually carry their own weight for a change instead of just being given free money. But somehow, giving money to someone living under the poverty line is a bad thing . . . .