Free Republic

YGTBFKM Until today, I didn't realize that individuals are now being assigned ESG scores that some institutions use to decide whether they will do business with a person. I obviously knew about ESG scores that huge investment firms are using to force corporations to conform to ideological demands. I knew that in some cases, prominent individuals or troublemakers have been blackballed by banks and other firms. And, of course, I know that some companies that sell politically incorrect items are getting deplatformed by PayPal and even web providers. But I didn't know that an industry has sprung up to analyze...

Chinese-owned video streaming platform TikTok has reportedly been asking users for their iPhone passwords in order to view content, sparking concern among individuals using the app.Reports that the platform began asking users to enter their iPhone passwords in order to watch videos on the app first began emerging in November, according to Dexerto, with the publication noting users took to social media to raise the alarm.Yet TikTok—which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020—has not explained the reasoning behind the need for users to enter their highly personal and sensitive information.Dexerto noted...

Countries have a mammoth task ahead as they gather for the COP28 climate summit in Dubai. They are way off track for preventing “climate catastrophe,” and scientists are sounding the alarm that time is running out to slash fossil fuels. Data from Climate Action Tracker, an independent research group, reveals how much planet-heating pollution is still being spewed out, who are the biggest polluters and how much progress still needs to be made. The world pumped out around 50 billion metric tons of planet-heating gases in 2022, according to this data. China was the largest climate polluter, making up nearly...

Antifa is a violent left-wing Communist faction that uses a black bloc tactic where they dress in black from head to toe and cover their faces with black masks. The tactic is meant to make it more difficult for police to identify those who break the law during a riot. Someone is organizing criminals and vandals to loot and destroy cities but the corporate media don’t seem all that interested in getting to the bottom of it. In fact, Democrats and their allies in the press have been actively engaging in misdirection, lamely accusing white supremacists of being behind the...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was right to declare Wednesday that Hong Kong can no longer be regarded as autonomous from China. The United States must lead the world in rejecting what China is doing to this former British colony. What is happening in Hong Kong is a legal, political, and moral disgrace. With its move to impose a new national security law upon the city, Beijing is asserting decisive and unilateral authority over Hong Kong in violation of its international commitments. Xi Jinping is abandoning the 1984 Sino-British Joint declaration by which China vowed to respect Hong Kong's political...