Woke DJ Moby Quits Twitter in Protest of Elon Musk: Twitter a ‘Cesspool of Racism, Anti-Semitism, Disinformation’
Moby — the electronic music pop star and DJ — has announced he is quitting Twitter in protest of Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media company, complaining the platform has become a “cesspool of racism, anti-semitism, disinformation, and dimwitted alt-right hate, and it’s time to leave.”
On Tuesday, Moby indicated that three recent tweets by Elon Musk were the last straw: a meme featuring Pepe the Frog, which Moby described as “alt-right” and “anti-Semitic”; a humorous meme making fun of CNN, which Moby called a “fake @cnn story”; and a photo of his bedside table featuring a historic firearm and multiple cans of Diet Coke, among other things.
“This will be my last tweet,” Moby wrote. “@Twitter has become a cesspool of racism, anti-semitism, disinformation, and dimwitted alt-right hate, and it’s time to leave.”
These are the Musk tweets that Moby found unbearably offensive.
Moby is the latest celebrity to quit Twitter in protest of Musk. Others include Debra Messing, Jack White, Whoopi Goldberg, model Gigi Hadid, mega-TV producer Shonda Rhimes, and siblings Patricia and Rosanna Arquette.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Moby attend American Legacy Foundation Honors “Celebrating the Legacy of a Tobacco-Free Future at Cipriani on March 6, 2006 in New York City. (Neil Rasmus/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Musk recently restored the account of former President Donald Trump, who is running again for the White House, prompting left-wing celebrities to call it “a tragic day for America.” He has also unbanned a number of prominent conservative and non-leftist accounts including The Babylon Bee, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and Juanita Broaddrick.
Earlier this week, Musk said he plans to grant “amnesty” to blacklisted Twitter accounts, saying the amnesty will be for users who had not “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.”
Mainstream news organizations are trying to cancel Musk by pressuring advertisers into abandoning Twitter — a common tactic used by the left in the culture wars. The result has been that more than a third of Twitter’s top 100 marketers have reportedly not advertised on Twitter in the past two weeks,
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com
China Floods Twitter With Porn To Suppress Protests
Chinese government bots are tweeting "sexually explicit posts about porn and escorts" to drown out news of protests against dictator Xi Jinping, the New York Post reported Monday.
According to the Twitter account @AirMovingDevice, which says it analyzes "China and the world in data and graphs," a Chinese citizen who searches for Beijing or Shanghai will "mostly see ads for escorts/porn/gambling." The "vast majority" of the posts appear to come from bots that "tweet at a high, steady rate throughout the day."
The porn-pushing comes as protests rock China. Across the country, demonstrators are calling for an end to the Chinese government's zero-COVID policy, which has resulted in years of lockdowns. Chinese citizens were outraged over a Thursday fire at an apartment building in Urumqi during which residents and firefighters were reportedly "blocked by locked doors or other pandemic restrictions."
Protesters are even demanding the resignation of dictator Xi, a call "almost unheard of in a country where Xi has a level of power unseen since Mao Zedong's era," the Post reported.
In response, China has cracked down on protesters, with police stopping and searching people at protest sites. Shanghai police went so far as to arrest, beat, and kick a BBC journalist covering the protests.
Stanford University researcher Mengyu Dong wrote that some of the porn accounts "have been dormant for years, only to become active … after protests broke out in China."
Chinese state media, however, have not mentioned the protests, which the Post says are "the biggest since Tiananmen Square in 1989."
Published under: China, Lockdown, Protests, Twitter, Xi Jinping
KILL THE DICTATORS!
Revolution in China: Protesters Demand Xi Jinping Step Down
THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
American people deserve to know what China was up to with Joe Biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to Biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous Hunter Biden laptop? The conflicted Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel now.
TOM FITTON - JUDICIAL WATCH
Exclusive–James Comer 95% Sure Hunter’s Artwork Sold to Chinese, Compromising Joe Biden
Rep. James Comer (R-TN), the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, told Breitbart News Saturday he strongly suspects that Hunter Biden’s artwork was sold to Chinese oligarchs, potentially implicating president Joe Biden.
“With respect to China, since Joe Biden’s been president, that we didn’t even talk about in the press conference, was the fact that Hunter became an artist for a week, if you’ll remember, and he sold some very expensive artwork,” Comer prefaced, noting his Thursday press conference in which he said the Biden family will be investigated for nine potential violations.
Hunter has reportedly sold five paintings worth $75,000 each to an anonymous buyer. Hunter’s art dealer, Georges Bergès, has previously boasted he had strong ties to businessmen in Communist China, which has concerned many due to the Biden family’s business ventures abroad.
“We are 95% sure that that artwork went to China,” Comer said. “We don’t know where exactly that went to in China, but we’re going to try to find out when we get subpoena power.”
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki has defended Hunter’s art scheme and his contact with potential “anonymous” art buyers as “reasonable, claiming Hunter “is not involved in the sale or discussions about the sale of his art,” and that Hunter will not be “informed” of “who is purchasing his art.”
The newly Republican-controlled House will have the power to compel testimony from key individuals, including Hunter, to reveal just how deep Joe Biden’s involvement in the family business is.
Comer gave a second example of potential Biden family wrongdoing while Joe Biden was president, citing the president’s policy decision to sell the Strategic Petroleum Reserves to China, which Comer suspects involved CEFC, a defunct Chinese energy company. Hunter had been trying to work a deal with the CEFC in which Joe Biden would receive a ten percent equity stake in the deal, according to whistleblower Tony Bobulinski.
“He sold the strategic reserves to a Chinese energy company,” Comer said. “We believe that parts of that energy company were the remnants of the CEFC.”
“We have plenty of quality whistleblowers that were on the inside,” Comer said, probably eluding to Bobulinski. “They were president of his company. They were, you know, business partners,” he said. “So we have that. We believe that some of the former owners of CEFC were part of this group that purchased oil from the oil reserves.”
Comer then slammed Joe Biden for potential wrongdoing with China while not raising pressing concerns about China’s role in failing to police the sale of fentanyl components.
“Joe Biden goes to China and he never mentions fentanyl, which has killed one hundred thousand people since he’s been president. He never mentioned a lot of the unfair trade practices that our manufacturers have, the fact that China is stealing our patents and our trademarks,” he said.
“This looks like a president who’s compromised by China. And you look at some of what little bank records we have, and Hunter Biden’s received millions of dollars from China. So this is worthy of an investigation,” he concluded.
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Police in China Arrest, Beat BBC Journalist Covering Mass Coronavirus Protests
A BBC reporter was arrested and beaten by China police on Sunday while covering mass protests in Shanghai against the country’s draconian zero-coronavirus policy.
The assault came days after World Economic Forum (WEF) founder and Chair Klaus Schwab gave an interview with a Chinese state media outlet and proclaimed China was a “role model” for other nations when it came to dealing with the virus.
“[…] The Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries,” Schwab told CGTN’s Tian Wei on the sidelines of last week’s APEC CEO Summit in Bangkok, Thailand.
The journalist who was attacked and detained was amongst thousands of people who flooded the streets of China’s major cities in a rare outpouring of public anger against the brutal governing Communist dictatorship.
The demonstrations are an unprecedented challenge to President Xi Jinping, with some calling on him to resign.
“The BBC is extremely concerned about the treatment of our journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests in Shanghai,” the broadcaster said in a statement.
The full statement can be seen below:
Speaking in Beijing, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said the BBC’s statement did not reflect what had happened, and that he did not identify himself as a reporter or show his press credentials, the Guardian reports.
“According to our understanding, the BBC’s statement is not true. According to authorities in Shanghai the journalist in question did not reveal his journalist identity at the time, he did not openly show his foreign press card,” Zhao said.
“When the incident happened, law enforcement personnel asked people to leave, and when certain people did not cooperate they were taken away from the scene.”
Lawrence, working in the country as an accredited journalist, was detained for several hours, during which time he was beaten and kicked by police, according to the BBC. He was later released.
Footage on social media showed him being dragged to the ground in cuffs, while in another video, he was seen saying: “Call the consulate now.”
“It is very worrying that one of our journalists was attacked in this way whilst carrying out his duties,” the statement said.
A demonstrator holds a blank sign and chants slogans during a protest in Beijing, China, on Monday, Nov. 28, 2022. Protests against Covid restrictions spread across China on Sunday as citizens took to the streets and university campuses, venting their anger and frustrations on local officials and the Communist Party. (Source: Bloomberg)
Policemen stand on guard during a rally against China’s draconian Covid-19 restrictions in Beijing on November 28, 2022. (NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty)
“We have had no official explanation or apology from the Chinese authorities, beyond a claim by the officials who later released him that they had arrested him for his own good in case he caught Covid from the crowd,” the statement added.
“We do not consider this a credible explanation.”
Sunday’s national protests marked the third night of chaos which has spread to some of the country’s biggest cities, including Wuhan, the first epicentre of the coronavirus almost three years ago and the city that then spread it to the world.
This Foreign Company Wants To Mine Massive Amounts of Lithium in Nevada. First, It Must Overcome Its China Problem.
Top China hawks aren't sold on Canadian company Lithium Americas' move to distance itself from top Chinese investor
A Canadian company hopes to use Biden administration loans to open the largest lithium mine in North America. But first, it must convince government officials and prospective partners that it's adequately decoupled from its top shareholder: a Chinese enterprise led by known Chinese Communist Party members.
Lithium Americas—whose largest shareholder is Chinese mineral giant Ganfeng Lithium—earlier this month announced its intention to split the company into two separate entities, a move that comes as it works to obtain a Biden administration loan to fund "the majority" of its lithium mining project in northern Nevada. The company told the Washington Free Beacon it expects the separation to ease "geopolitical" concerns from government officials and investors over its relationship with Beijing-tied Ganfeng, given that the split would decouple Lithium Americas' Nevada mine from its more controversial mining projects in South America, which Ganfeng holds direct ownership stakes in. But leading China hawks in the Republican Party are not satisfied with the separation, prompting them to sound the alarm over Lithium Americas' potential to receive federal funding.
That dissatisfaction stems from the fact that under the proposed split, shareholders will receive stakes in both Lithium Americas' North American and South American entities proportional to their current holdings. Because Ganfeng is the only entity that owns more than 10 percent of Lithium Americas' shares, it will remain the largest shareholder of both companies following the split, a Lithium Americas official confirmed to the Free Beacon. As a result, Ganfeng will still have a sizable financial interest in Lithium Americas' mine unless it decides to divest—financial interest that has former secretary of state Mike Pompeo calling the split a "half measure" that is "nowhere near enough to guarantee that the CCP will not have any amount of control over a key source of America's lithium supply."
"Until we know that no CCP-controlled shareholder is involved in this project, the Treasury Department should not allow it to move forward," Pompeo told the Free Beacon. Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) echoed Pompeo's sentiment, with Waltz calling Lithium Americas' separation plan a "shell game" and Cotton urging President Joe Biden's Energy Department to "do its due diligence and not fall prey to any trickery orchestrated by Ganfeng."
It's unclear whether Lithium Americas' corporate split will convince the Biden administration, which did not return a request for comment, to award the company a loan. A Lithium Americas official told the Free Beacon the company expects to receive a final decision on its loan application in the near future, meaning it could receive federal funding before it finalizes its separation plan next year. "It definitely won't be far," the official said of the Biden administration's loan decision. "We have gone through the entire Department of Energy process."
Should Lithium Americas obtain a Biden administration loan, the company still may not be in the clear when it comes to federal oversight. Waltz told the Free Beacon that a Republican-controlled House could investigate loan recipients as they work to avoid a repeat of the Obama administration's failed green energy loans, which went to a number of startups—including an electric battery maker—that went on to declare bankruptcy.
"There will absolutely be efforts—they're already underway. Now that we'll have subpoena power, we'll shine a big spotlight on it," Waltz said of House Republicans' plans to conduct energy-related investigations. "I think the next two years we’ll be investigating, getting to the bottom, having hearings, putting on a spotlight. And then we’ve got to win the Congress and the White House to actually start rolling some of this stuff back."
Lithium Americas plans to break ground on its mining site in northwestern Nevada, which is home to tens of thousands of tons of lithium, next year. The project is a clear priority for the Biden administration as it works to promote electric vehicles, which require large amounts of lithium for their batteries. Those batteries, however, are almost impossible to source from the United States—China controls roughly 60 percent of the world's lithium resources and dominates the electric battery supply chain in general.
In an attempt to undermine that dominance, the White House in December 2021 announced $17 billion in federal loans to "support the domestic battery supply chain," a move Democratic Nevada senator Catherine Cortez Masto said would "benefit national security by leveling the playing field with China." Lithium Americas applied for such a loan in April, but the company's deep ties to the very same nation the White House hopes the loan program will deter—China—have plagued its plot to obtain federal funds. Beyond its status as Lithium Americas' largest shareholder, Ganfeng has a tight relationship with China's state-owned banks, which helped the company fund mining projects in South America and Australia.
Ganfeng's executives also have extensive ties to Beijing, the Free Beacon reported in September. Ganfeng president Li Liangbin, for example, serves on a number of Chinese Communist Party-aligned committees and advisory boards, and executive vice president Wang Xiaoshen—who serves on Lithium Americas' board—got his start in the lithium sector through Chinese state-owned enterprises. Lithium Americas acknowledged in an interview with the Free Beacon that Xiaoshen's role on the company's board prompted questions from investors following media reports.
This is not the first time Ganfeng's sizable stake in Lithium Americas has sparked concern from federal officials. Following the Free Beacon‘s September report, Cotton wrote a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm demanding "strict oversight regarding potential federal funding of CCP-owned or -controlled entities."
"As the government continues to invest in battery supply chain programs, it is critical that DOE ensure taxpayer funding does not go to corporations with CCP ties and does not increase U.S. mineral dependence on China," Cotton wrote. "Ganfeng and any other Chinese entities with CCP ties should divest their stakes in Lithium Americas before the company is offered this loan."
Republicans Set To Turn Up the Heat on Biden Administration’s Foreign Dealings
Incoming House Foreign Affairs chairman says focus will be China, Russia, Iran
Congressional investigators are poised to turn up the heat on the Biden administration's foreign policy decisions now that Republicans are in control of the House, according to the incoming chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who told the Washington Free Beacon in a wide-ranging interview that the administration's dealings with China, Russia, and Iran will become the center of multiple probes.
Rep. Michael McCaul (Texas), the lead Republican on the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Republicans will now be able to unearth information about the Biden administration's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, its sale of weapons technology to China, and whether President Joe Biden benefited from his son's business dealings, among other issues.
"We're going to have gavels, we're going to have subpoena power," McCaul told the Free Beacon.
As the House Foreign Affairs Committee's ranking member, McCaul spearheaded investigations into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, the deadly evacuation from Afghanistan, and the administration's dealings with Communist China. But without subpoena power, Democrats and the administration were able to obstruct those probes. Now that power has shifted, McCaul said he is ready to "fully exercise" the committee's jurisdiction by reigniting a slew of investigations into every aspect of the Biden administration's foreign dealings.
McCaul, a former counterterrorism and national security chief in Texas's U.S. attorney's office who this month was reelected for his 10th term in Congress, said China will be among Congress's top priorities. The lawmaker told the Free Beacon that he is in possession of documents showing the Biden administration granted export licenses for $60 billion worth of American goods to be sold to Huawei, a top Chinese Communist Party tech company known to be at the forefront of the regime's spy apparatus. Another $40 billion in exports was approved for SMIC, another CCP tech giant that produces computer chips.
These sales were approved by the Bureau of Industry and Security, a little-known office housed in the Commerce Department. In the last six months, McCaul said, that office has denied less than 1 percent of the proposed export licenses for China. This information dovetails with recent reports revealing that China has bolstered its hypersonic missile program with American technology purchased from firms that receive U.S. government support.
McCaul said he will shine a light on the Bureau of Industry and Security and will be "focused like a laser" on the bureau's approval of sales to China.
"Why are we exporting technology to China that they use to build their hypersonic weapons with? Why are we exporting all this stuff—aerospace technology, satellite technology—that has allowed them to build their military apparatus? They steal it, but we don't have to sell it to them," McCaul said.
Another focus will be China's Belt and Road Initiative, a CCP tool used to subjugate developing nations. China provides countries, including many in Africa, with low-interest loans that ultimately leave the nation in debt to the CCP, which uses this foothold to exploit the countries' resources, such as precious metals.
"We have to compete with China. We can't just say they're bad," McCaul said. "It's a great power competition." To this end, he will seek to bolster the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which Congress created to spur private investment across the globe. The corporation, McCaul said, is not being used "the way Congress intended," and he plans to revamp it with a specific eye toward countering China's Belt and Road Initiative.
The Biden administration's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan will also be back in the spotlight.
McCaul, who led a minority investigation into the matter, said the administration is stonewalling congressional investigators by hiding scores of documents that detail Afghanistan's fall in real time. McCaul said he has already hit the Biden administration with a document preservation demand and will use the Foreign Affairs Committee to reignite his probe into the issue.
As Afghanistan was descending into Taliban control, McCaul said, U.S intelligence indicated that Russia was amassing forces near Ukraine. "It's a cause-and-effect piece. It wasn't a matter of if, but when," McCaul said. The Biden administration's foreign policy failures created a domino effect that began in Afghanistan.
Now, "if we're successful in Ukraine, that's a deterrence against Chairman Xi invading Taiwan," McCaul said, referring to Chinese president Xi Jinping. As the Foreign Affairs Committee's leader, McCaul will have authority to haul Biden administration officials before Congress to grill them on the situation in Ukraine, as well as administration efforts to counter Russian aggression.
McCaul also seeks to increase U.S. efforts to counter Iran, a chief ally of China and Russia. While the Biden administration has hopes of salvaging the 2015 nuclear accord, McCaul said the priority must shift to supporting Iranian citizens who are protesting to oust the hardline regime.
"Instead of seizing the moment and joining and helping them, this administration, because it's so concerned about the Iran deal … is ignoring this one," McCaul said. "We have a great opportunity to seize the momentum."
McCaul said he will lead efforts to pressure the State Department into increasing its support for protesters, such as providing demonstrators with internet services so that they can organize against the regime. This, he said, will also help the world obtain concrete evidence detailing the regime's murders and brutal imprisonment of dissidents.
Another priority that is certain to garner headlines is McCaul's focus on Hunter Biden's laptop, which appears to contain evidence of shady business deals involving Joe Biden during his time as vice president. Along with the House Oversight Committee, McCaul hopes to collect evidence that could be used to expose the elder Biden.
"We're not going to shoot with blanks and start talking about impeachment," McCaul said. "We have to build the case. There's a lot of fire to smoke when you look at these financial transactions that were facilitated by the father, given his role as vice president. The question is, did the father gain financially from this?"
GOP Rep. Gallagher: ‘TikTok Should Be Banned’ — ‘Digital Fentanyl, Addicting Our Kids’
During this week’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) called for the ban of the social media platform TikTok.
Gallagher told fill-in host Sean Duffy that TikTok was “digital fentanyl.”
“I want to get your take on this,” Duffy said. “We now know that Chinese-aligned companies are mining data on American citizens. For example, TikTok, a very popular app that a lot of our kids use, Donald Trump was pushing a separation of TikTok from the CCP. But other companies are doing it. Is that something that Congress should be looking at, rules should be in place that the Chinese Communist Party shouldn’t be mining data off of American citizens?”
“TikTok should be banned,” Gallagher replied. “Senator Marco Rubio and I have legislation that does exactly that. TikTok is digital fentanyl, addicting our kids. And just like actual fentanyl, it ultimately goes back to the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok is owned by ByteDance. ByteDance is controlled by the CCP. That means the CCP can track your location. It can track your keystrokes. It can censor your news.
“Why would we give our foremost adversary that amount of power?” he continued. “Oh, and, oh, by the way, TikTok is using the swamp against us. They’re hiring an army of lobbyists, including former congressmen, senators, 31 former high-level congressional staffers, in order to do their bidding. No paycheck is worth that, OK? We need to ban TikTok.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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