Independent Thinking

“Your platform should be banned,” said Congresswoman Cathy Rodgers, setting the stage for the marathon five-hour-long Congressional hearing (“America May Be a Step Closer”). On March 23, 2023, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced questioning from Congress members, with intelligence and legislative bodies from the Biden administration expressing fears that the Chinese government might weaponize American app-usage data. This situation was not the first time TikTok found itself in such a predicament (Perrigo). In 2020, then-President of the United States, Donald Trump, utilized the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to issue an executive order that required TikTok to stop operations in the United States because of national security concerns (“United States Pursues Regulatory Actions”). In response, TikTok filed a lawsuit against the American courts and secured a preliminary injunction against the executive order (“United States Pursues Regulatory Actions”). Despite granting TikT...

"Wearing a simple white shirt, dark pants, and carrying two shopping bags," he blocked a column of a Chinese military tank (Dunleavy). The Tank Man, known as the "Unknown Rebel," emerged into the global media spotlight after the violent crackdown (Iyer). This incident was a series of protests in Beijing, China, 1989, led by "university students, intellectuals, and workers" (Ray). These demonstrations aimed to seek "democratic, political, social, economic and other reforms" and garnered widespread global attention (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). The protests escalated from a scale of "100,000" students to "1 million" people participating (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). Ultimately, the tragic incident culminated in "Chinese soldiers and police storming Tiananmen Square, firing live rounds into the crowd" (History.com Editors), resulting in "hundreds to thousands of protesters being killed...