The White House's decision to ban TikTok from federal devices represents an attempt to use the power of the state to "suppress foreign companies," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday. The world's leading superpower should not fear a popular youth app, the ministry stated.

The White House Office of Management and Budget issued guidance on Monday giving all federal agencies 30 days to wipe TikTok from employees' devices. Mandated by Congress, the move follows similar guidance by the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department, all of which cited alleged data harvesting by the Chinese-developed app.

"How unsure of itself can the world's top superpower be to fear a favorite app of young people like that?" Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a press briefing on Tuesday.

"The US has been over-stretching the concept of national security and abusing state power to suppress foreign companies," she continued. "We firmly oppose those wrong actions. The US government should respect the principles of market economy and fair competition."

Brazil has allowed two Iranian warships to dock in their country. The visit on Sunday comes after a diplomatic delay and in spite of US pressure.

Iranian warships IRIS Makran and IRIS Dena have docked in Rio de Janeiro, as confirmed by the deputy chief of Brazil's Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Carlos Eduardo Horta Arentz, in the state's Official Gazette (Diário Oficial da União). The ships will remain there until March 4, when they depart further for the Panama Canal that divides the American continent.

The decision comes in spite of US Ambassador to Brazil Elizabeth Bagley's warning Brasilia not to allow the Iranian Navy access to the South American port. She said at a press conference earlier this month that these ships "facilitated illegal trade and terrorist activities." She added that, to date, no other countries have provided a port for these vessels.

Biden has put the US Establishment into a bind: Can we imagine the US throwing up its hands and conceding Russian victory? 'No'. NATO might disintegrate in the face of such spectacular failure. Will Biden become desperate? And, as many suspect, gamble by doubling-down into a worsening situation?

24 February marks the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine. Rarely does a single geo-political event so completely overturn expectations; rarely, does one geo-political event re-orientate the world map. A look at a geo-political representation of the world today would shock at how small London, Paris and Washington are shown, and how the world axis has shifted eastwards, with Eurasia the new global 'eye' at its centre.

To put this into perspective, one year ago the western élites gathered at the Munich Security Conference were in a delirium of excitement. It was heady, intoxicating -- as delegates imagined how their sanctions on Russia would collapse its economy, and likely lead to Putin's ouster.

It was to be the triumph of the western elites who attend Munich and Davos -- vindication for their imaginings of our shared global future. And it was to be too a clear validation that it was they who were on the 'right side of history', in stark contrast to 'those others' (Russia and the 'autocrats') who stood unmasked as history's 'dark side'.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows agencies to spy on anyone, anywhere...

Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines wrote to Congressional leaders on Tuesday, asking them to renew a post-9/11 law allowing the US to spy on foreign targets anywhere in the world. While the law is explicitly intended to surveil foreigners, it has been used to monitor millions of Americans.

Section 702 of the 2008 amendment to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legalized the Bush administration's secret wiretapping program, allowing US intelligence agencies to monitor messages from abroad made through American networks like Google. Set to expire at the end of the year, the White House is already pushing lawmakers toward its renewal.

Garland and Haines wrote in their letter:

"The reauthorization of the law is a top legislative priority for this administration. The information acquired using Section 702 plays a key role in keeping the United States, its citizens, and its allies safe and secure."

Garland and Haines, the latter of whom served as deputy director of the CIA under Barack Obama, claimed that information gathered using Section 702 was instrumental in foiling cyberattacks on the US, halting the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction, and thwarting foreign states' attempts to recruit spies in the the US.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) on Wednesday introduced legislation to prevent the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC), which he and others say could surveil Americans' financial activity.

Emmer, a staunch cryptocurrency advocate, wrote:

"Today, I introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act to halt efforts of unelected bureaucrats in Washington, DC from stripping Americans of their right to financial privacy. Any digital version of the dollar must uphold our American values of privacy, individual sovereignty, and free market competitiveness. Anything less opens the door to the development of a dangerous surveillance tool."

Emmer said that the bill would bar the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC, prevent the Fed from using a CBDC for monetary policy purposes, and require the Fed's CBDC projects to be transparent. CBDCs are digital versions of national fiat currencies that operate on private blockchains.

The US is preparing to stage false flag chemical attacks in Ukraine to pin the blame on Moscow for the use of banned toxic agents, the chief of Russia's Nuclear Biological and Chemical Defense troops, Igor Kirillov, has said.

The Americans believe that the international community wouldn't be able to organize an effective investigation of such "provocations" due to the fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, which would allow Washington to escape responsibility, Kirillov said during a briefing on Tuesday.

Russia's Defense Ministry has obtained information that a train with a cargo of chemical substances in one of its cars had apparently arrived in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Kramatorsk in Donbass on February 10, the commander said.

When one reads the 2022 National Security Strategy of the US, it becomes crystal clear that, at least according to the world view as promulgated by the administration of President Joe Biden, the US and China are on trajectory that can only lead to one thing - military confrontation.

At the core of this assessment is the enduring belief on the part of the Biden administration that the key to America's continued role as a world leader is the reinvigoration of "America's unmatched network of alliances and partnerships to uphold and strengthen the principles and institutions that have enabled so much stability, prosperity, and growth for the last 75 years."

The Biden administration has a name for this network - the rules-based international order. And sustaining the grip this order has on the world represents an existential challenge for the US.

There is no question that it is more difficult to search the Internet today than was the case 15 or 20 years ago. Especially on the English-language Internet, information control is much more apparent and effective, and censorship is now fully in the open with little or no pretense or disguise. Many web pages or documents which would always appear on the first page of a search in the past, cannot now be accessed by normal means, and many sources have actually been deleted. Many links to historical documents that I saved 15 or 20 years ago, are still active, and the documents can still be accessed, but they will no longer appear on a search with any terms. It is now often true that even if you know the complete title of a document, the search engines - especially Google - will refuse to produce it. This is so true that Google (particularly) no longer functions as a useful search engine; it is instead a "gate-keeper" with two main functions. One is to feed you information it wants you to have (or things it wants you to think), and the second is to ensure you never find information it doesn't want you to have (or things it doesn't want you to think).
No country, to my knowledge, censors information today as heavily as does the US. The entire English Internet is bad, but the US is notably the worst, at least in my experience. This is true not only in the sense of making domestic information unavailable to Americans, but also an increasing amount of foreign information is unavailable in the US, with many foreign websites either blocked, or simply not appearing on any searches made from within the US. It is also true in the sense of restricting access to US Internet information from outside the country. In searching American websites today, I increasingly receive notices like the one above, indicating that the (often false) version of current events being promulgated is for domestic consumption only, and that the US does not want citizens in other countries to know the stories they are telling. It is surprising that many of the most prominent US mass media outlets engage in this practice, which is not rare.

A powerful feeling rhythms your skin and drums up your soul as you're immersed in a long walk under persistent snow flurries, pinpointed by selected stops and enlightening conversations, crystallizing disparate vectors one year after the start of the accelerated phase of the proxy war between US/NATO and Russia.

That's how Moscow welcomes you: the undisputed capital of the 21st century multipolar world.

A long, walking meditation impregnates on us how President Putin's address - rather, a civilizational speech - last week was a game-changer when it comes to the demarcation of the civilizational red lines we are all now facing. It acted like a powerful drill perforating the less than short, actually zero term memory of the Collective West. No wonder it exercised a somewhat sobering effect contrasting the non-stop Russophobia binge of the NATOstan space.

Alexey Dobrinin, Director of the Foreign Policy Planning Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia, has correctly described Putin's address as "a methodological basis for understanding, describing and constructing multipolarity."

For years some of us have been showing how the emerging multipolar world is defined - but goes way beyond - high speed interconnectivity, physical and geoeconomic. Now, as we reach the next stage, it's as if Putin and Xi Jinping, each in their own way, are conceptualizing the two key civilizational vectors of multipolarity. That's the deeper meaning of the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership, invisible to the naked eye.

Metaphorically, it also speaks volumes that Russia's pivot to the East, towards the rising sun, now irreversible, was the only logical path to follow as, to quote Dylan, darkness dawns at the break of noon across the West.

As it stands, with the wobblin', ragin' Hegemon lost in its own pre-fabricated daze, the real runners of the show feeding burning flesh to irredeemably mediocre political "elites", China may have a little more latitude than Russia, as the Middle Kingdom is not - yet - under the same existential pressure Russia has been put under.

Whatever happens next geopolitically, Russia is at heart a - giant - obstacle on the warmongering path of the Hegemon: the ultimate target is top "threat" China.

Putin's ability to size up our extremely delicate geopolitical moment - via a dose of highly concentrated, undiluted realism - is something to behold. And then Foreign Minister Lavrov provided the sweet cherry on top, calling the hapless US ambassador for a hardcore dress down: oh yeah, this is war, hybrid and otherwise, and your NATO mercenaries as well as your junk hardware are legitimate targets.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council, now more than ever relishing his "unplugged" status, made it all very clear: "Russia risks being torn apart if it stops a special military operation (SMO) before victory is achieved."

And the message is even more acute because it represents the - public - cue to the Chinese leadership at the Zhongnahhai to understand: whatever happens next, this is the Kremlin's unmovable official position.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) tweeted an image on Saturday showing what he said was a mythical woodland elf of Mayan folklore. The picture might be a distraction after social and political unrest flared up on Sunday. Over 500,000 people protested in Mexico City to voice anger over AMLO's move to consolidate the electoral authority, according to Reuters.

"I share two photos of our supervision of the Mayan Train works: one, taken by an engineer three days ago, apparently from an Aluxe; another, by Diego Prieto of a splendid pre-Hispanic sculpture in Ek Balam," AMLO said.

The nighttime photo by the engineer shows what appears to be the mythical woodland elf.