Suspension of the 1st Amendment

Posted on January 28, 2021January 28, 2021 by Denise Simon

‘petition the government for a redress of grievances’….remember that part of the First Amendment? 45 words of freedom…no more.

Diogenes' Middle Finger: NYT Graciously Admits the 1st ...

So, from the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration… Notice it expires in 3 months….hummm

Summary

The Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin due to a heightened threat environment across the United States, which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the successful Presidential Inauguration. Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.

Duration

Issued: January 27, 2021 11:00 am
Expires: April 30, 2021 01:00 pm

Details

Throughout 2020, Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs) targeted individuals with opposing views engaged in First Amendment-protected, non-violent protest activity. DVEs motivated by a range of issues, including anger over COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force have plotted and on occasion carried out attacks against government facilities.

Long-standing racial and ethnic tension—including opposition to immigration—has driven DVE attacks, including a 2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas that killed 23 people.

DHS is concerned these same drivers to violence will remain through early 2021 and some DVEs may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. to target elected officials and government facilities.

DHS remains concerned that Homegrown Violent Extremists (HVEs) inspired by foreign terrorist groups, who committed three attacks targeting government officials in 2020, remain a threat.

Threats of violence against critical infrastructure, including the electric, telecommunications and healthcare sectors, increased in 2020 with violent extremists citing misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 for their actions.

DHS, as well as other Federal agencies and law enforcement partners will continue to take precautions to protect people and infrastructure across the United States.

DHS remains committed to preventing violence and threats meant to intimidate or coerce specific populations on the basis of their religion, race, ethnicity, identity or political views.

DHS encourages state, local, tribal, and territorial homeland security partners to continue prioritizing physical security measures, particularly around government facilities, to protect people and critical infrastructure.

The Biden inaugural address included much of this language and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez may be nuts but she is telling us what is really going on….this is a full blown assault on white, conservative citizens across the country…70,80, 90, 100 million people perhaps?

Do you really know the reason the National Guard is still in Washington DC? It is not so much about securing the Capitol or guarding against further protests, it is a message to the nation that you are simply no longer trusted in any form.

Further, this site wrote about pending legislation in Congress that should terrify you beyond words. As a reminder:

There have been countless hearings on The Hill in various committees where Democrats assert the deadly threats of white nationalism and systemic racism. At no time is there tangible evidence except talking points concocted by progressive think tanks and isolated cases investigated by the FBI.

There is also the ever constant issue getting very little attention and that is ‘critical race theory’. Emerging from Harvard University in the 1980’s, critical race theory came from Derrick Bell, a tenured African-American professor.

In part from the Federalist:

As such, federal employees and those who work for corporations that do business with the federal government sucked into the poisonous vortex of critical race theory can thank President Trump for ordering a stop to the promulgation of critical race theory. Thanks should also be sent to scholar Christopher Rufo, whose diligence brought the critical race theory venom to the forefront of Trump’s attention, and Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who is working to root out members of the administrative state who defy that order.

It’s important to remember that because very few of its activists have shown much sincere desire to end racism, critical race theory should not be taken entirely at face value. If a majority of its supporters were sincere, they would be willing to have fruitful discussions in a civil society that supports civil discourse. Rather, critical race theory’s agitators are committed to tearing down civil society on the pretense that it is an incubator for “systemic racism.”

If you’ve any doubt about that, consider the Smithsonian display on “whiteness” that condemned all elements of civil society, including politeness, hard work, self-reliance, logic, planning, and family cohesion. None of those are “white” values, but critical race theory frames them just so. This sort of animus proves that critical race theory “arguments” are non-starters and merely serve as convenient pretexts for power grabs.

Doused with critical race theory, the Black Lives Matter organization and its related Antifa-infused mobs are organized for the same purposes as all cult recruits: to recruit more people and to implement the desire to divide and conquer. The phenomenon can be seen as they surround people in vehicles or restaurants, demanding their victims raise a fist and recite slogans under the intense intimidation and implications of violence.

Where do you go to redress grievances? Nowhere…just behave accordingly to the Democrats…

Biden Admin Anti-Israel, Pro Iran

Posted on January 21, 2021January 21, 2021 by Denise Simon

First question is where is Trita Parsi, Ben Rhodes and Ploughshares….

Those answers may be related to –>

The Department of Justice charged a political scientist and frequent contributor to left-leaning foreign policy publications and mainstream newspapers with acting as an unregistered agent for Iran, according to an announcement from federal prosecutors.

Using the guise of a free-thinking academic, Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi has since 2007 been pushing regime propaganda in publications including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, and the Nation magazine, as well as many academic journals. Afrasiabi was formally charged on Tuesday with “acting and conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” according to an indictment unsealed in a Brooklyn federal court. More details here.

So, Breitbart has published an item that details several clues that the Biden administration will be more pro Iran and anti Israel and suggests much of that is already underway. It appears that Breitbart is accurate in this assessment when one also includes the fact that John Kerry is on the Biden team and Biden has chosen Wendy Sherman to be the #2 at the State Department. Sherman was John Kerry’s right hand person during the entire Iran nuclear deal. In fact Biden’s selections for key positions at the State Department are almost all Obama re-treads.

The Deal is for Real - Defense One

Gotta wonder if any of the White House press corps will even bother to ask some hard questions of Jen Psaki…

The Lincoln Project is Not Our Ally. | by Lauren ... source

Meanwhile, we know how disgusting and nefarious the members of The Lincoln Project are….but fair warning as it appears they are the newest version of Fusion GPS…opposition research. How is that related to Iran?

The experienced political grifters who founded the Lincoln Project aren’t going to let Donald Trump’s imminent departure or the end of the 2020 U.S. election cycle impede their cash flow.

Four founding members of the controversial super PAC, which recently parted ways with cofounder John Weaver after dozens of young men accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior, are taking their talents to Israel in an effort to make money by advising one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents in the Jewish state’s upcoming elections.

The Associated Press confirmed that Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, Stuart Stevens, and Reed Galen were recently hired to advise Gideon Sa’ar, a Netanyahu rival who left the Likud Party in 2019 after an unsuccessful campaign for party leadership. Sa’ar, who founded the New Hope party in December 2020, has accused Netanyahu of being too conciliatory to Palestinian interests.

Israel’s legislative elections will take place on March 23.

***

Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken a very hard stance against the nuclear deal and his opposition has been more soft on the approach. There is another fact that barely made any headlines stating that Iran is the new defacto headquarters for al Qaeda. Remember them?

Analysis: 2 wanted al Qaeda leaders operate in Iran | FDD ... source

For 37 years, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Tehran sponsors Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and other countries, Shia militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

In 1998, an indictment issued by a U.S. district court stated that al Qaeda had “forged alliances” with the “government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.”

In 2011, a federal judge in New York ruled that the Tehran regime had provided support for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

From 2011 to 2016, the Obama administration repeated in formal terrorist designations and other official statements that the Iranian regime had a “secret deal” with al Qaeda that allows the group to “to funnel funds and operatives through” Iranian territory.

Under President Obama, the Treasury and State Departments described this network inside Iran as al Qaeda’s “core facilitation pipeline,” identified its leader as Yasin al-Suri, who had been allowed by “Iranian authorities” to operate inside Iran since 2005. This month, the State Department revealed that he is still working inside Iran.

Another document seized during that raid, but not released until 2017, states that al Qaeda operatives in Iran were given “everything they needed,” including “money, arms” and “training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.”

Then, two months ago, it was revealed that Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, a planner of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, had been living comfortably in Tehran, permitted to maintain a false identity as a Lebanese history professor. He was about to go somewhere in his car when assassins — presumably dispatched by Israel — ended his career.

Which raised a question: To what extent are Iran’s rulers currently enabling al Qaeda? Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo provided an answer.

For the past five years, he told reporters at the National Press Club, Iran’s rulers “have provided safe haven and logistical support — things like travel documents, ID cards, passports — that enable al Qaeda activity.”

AQ leaders in Iran also are allowed to “to fundraise, to freely communicate with al-Qaeda members around the world, and to perform many other functions that were previously directed from Afghanistan or Pakistan.”

He added: “As a result of this assistance, al Qaeda has centralized its leadership inside of Tehran.”

He named and announced sanctions on two such AQ leaders, and designated three members of an al Qaeda-linked group that, he said, operates on the border between Iran and Iraq.

Most media covered Mr. Pompeo’s remarks dismissively. The Associated Press told readers that “many in the intelligence community” found Mr. Pompeo’s charges regarding the Tehran-AQ link “overblown given a history of animosity between the two.”

The New York Times accused Mr. Pompeo of “demonizing Iran,” in order to make “any effort by Mr. Biden to resuscitate the Iran nuclear deal more difficult.”

And, of course, those who sympathize with Iran’s rulers were outraged. Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), asserted that Mr. Pompeo has “leaked materials to the advocacy group Foundation for Defense of Democracies aimed at supporting the claim of Iran and al Qaeda ties.”

That’s false. Beginning in 2011, colleagues at FDD worked hard to persuade the U.S. government to declassify and release primary source documents retrieved from Osama bin Laden’s villa in Pakistan. Mr. Pompeo, as CIA director, did that in 2017.

These documents are key for understanding how al Qaeda operates — in Iran and many other countries. But, as noted, the fact that AQ had an “agreement” with the Iranian regime had been revealed by the Obama administration years earlier. Why NIAC would not want additional information released I leave for you to consider.

The Obama administration ended up transferring billions of dollars to Iran’s rulers in exchange for their promise to slow-walk their nuclear program. The money was used to develop missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, establish military bases in Syria, arm Houthi rebels, attack Saudi oil facilities, and similar purposes.

And while Iran’s rulers remained in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) along with our European allies, they have repeatedly violated their obligations, for example announcing this past weekend that they were preparing to produce uranium metal, which they had agreed not to do for 15 years.

France, Germany and Britain urged the theocrats to “return to compliance with their JCPOA commitments without further delay.” A prediction: Iran’s rulers will promise to do that if the price is right. But they won’t keep their promise. Because they are not with us. They are with the terrorists — including those who attacked us on 9/11. source and hat tip

California, the Incubation State for Federal Policy/Law

Posted on January 19, 2021January 19, 2021 by Denise Simon

There are 20 counties in California that are sanctuaries for illegal aliens.
Lawmakers passed SB10 abolishing cash bail, and then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law in August 2018. It was supposed to take effect in October 2019, but a challenge from the bail industry blocked it pending the results of Proposition 25, a referendum to uphold the new law. The measure failed.
California’s high speed rail is bankrupt and it is years away from completion. ($9.98 Billion)
California paid inmates $1 Billion in fraudulent unemployment claims.
California bans gas-powered passenger cars and trucks beginning in 2035. Now Massachusetts is doing the same.

There is a several lack of housing options throughout the state. Of course there is the major homeless epidemic. We cannot begin to understand the full consequence of the fires much less the fact that there are brown outs and scheduled blackouts was Pacific Gas and Electric is bankrupt.

Op-Ed: Southern California has the resources to solve ...

Did we mention water shortages? Oh, there is the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) is faced with a $100 billion shortfall.

See where this is going? Now with the Biden/Harris administration….the predictions are there as spelled out the a recent LA Times op-ed.

***

WASHINGTON —

After four years of being relentlessly targeted by a Republican president who worked overtime to bait, punish and marginalize California and everything it represents, the state is suddenly center stage again in Washington’s policy arena.

California is emerging as the de facto policy think tank of the Biden-Harris administration and of a Congress soon to be under Democratic control. That’s rekindling past cliches about the state — incubator of innovation, premier laboratory of democracy, land of big ideas — even as it struggles with surging COVID-19 infections, a safety net frayed by the pandemic’s toll, crushing housing costs and wildfires, all fueling an exodus of residents.

There is no place the incoming administration is leaning on more heavily for inspiration in setting a progressive policy agenda.

The revival in Washington of the California model of governance was cemented by Democrats’ recent recapture of the Senate majority, and comes after a Trump-era hiatus during which the state was road-testing ambitious new policies. Another factor: California Sen. Kamala Harris is about to become vice president.

“California has never had a Democrat on a national ticket, much less a ticket that won,” said former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. “Kamala Harris will be in all the meetings and have the last word with the president after they are over. She’ll be sharing ideas, innovations and breakthroughs from California that might help solve problems on the national level.”

Other Californians will be doing the same from Biden’s Cabinet. Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra is nominated to run the massive Health and Human Services Department. The nominee for Treasury secretary, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, is a professor at UC Berkeley, as is the nominee for Energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm. Longtime California resident Alejandro Mayorkas is the nominee to run the Department of Homeland Security.

And in Congress, of course, San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi will be running point on the California agenda as House speaker.

Not that Biden needs the nudge. He’s been pushing to nationalize some of the state’s pioneering efforts on climate action, workers’ rights, law enforcement and criminal justice, healthcare and economic empowerment since he was vice president in the Obama era. He continued to champion the cause while he and Harris were still rivals in the 2020 presidential race.

The incoming administration is embracing some of California’s most pioneering initiatives, such as programs for rapidly decarbonizing the electricity grid and tuition-free college, as well as more obscure, incremental policies. Also on the new White House agenda will be measures to ban mandatory arbitration clauses in employee contracts and a revival of a “Cash for Clunkers” program aimed at providing incentives to get polluting cars off the road — signature California policies.

Even some ideas that haven’t worked out so well in California are on the national agenda now. Biden is a fierce proponent of high-speed rail, as well as new protections for gig economy workers that California voters diluted in November.

“California has this mantle of leadership, but along with that can come the stumbles of being the first adopter,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael). “It’s an innovative and imaginative place that tends to set trends and blaze trails. It’s too big and too influential not to inform our country’s policy direction going forward.”

California’s influence will be felt in how Americans power their homes and cars, and even in how they save for retirement.

“California is not just about pushing the envelope, it is about tearing it apart,” said former state Senate leader Kevin de León, who helped the state implement some of the innovative ideas the incoming administration wants to pursue. “The state is full of disruptors and malcontents who are impatient and have no problem challenging the status quo.”

De León worked for years to enroll all California workers in an “auto-IRA” program that would automatically direct a small share of their earnings to a 401(k)-style savings account. He was motivated by the experience of his aunt, a housekeeper and one of the millions of Californians who was toiling in a low-wage job without any retirement safety net beyond Social Security.

“This was a woman, salt of the earth, who always worked fingers to bone,” De León said. “Yet I am her IRA, I am her pension plan. Her story is not unique. You have millions of Californians and tens of millions of Americans who are retiring into poverty.” The CalSavers program that De León was able to help create in California is a template for Biden’s agenda on retirement security.

California’s plan to remove carbon-emitting power sources from its electricity grid entirely by 2045 also inspired the incoming administration. Biden is proposing an even more aggressive timeline, looking to move the grid to zero emissions nationwide by 2035.

The state’s plan was the most ambitious of its kind when it was approved in 2018, a snub at Trump’s unrelenting push to revive demand for fossil fuels. It moved several other states to push up their decarbonization timelines. “My thinking was we had to be a beacon of hope and opportunity while Trump was trying to undo all of our policies at the national level,” De León said.

When Trump moved to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, California committed to meeting its objectives regardless, and launched a successful crusade to persuade 23 other states to do the same. Biden is now preparing to reenter the accord. California’s landmark tailpipe emissions standards that the Trump administration worked furiously to erode are again central to that effort, helping to push the nation’s vehicle fleet toward electrification.

An environmental task force set up last year with members across the Democratic Party’s spectrum — co-chaired by former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, since appointed to Biden’s Cabinet as climate envoy — urged the incoming administration to seek counsel from California. “Immediately convene California, due to its unique authority, and other states with labor, auto industry, and environmental leaders to inform ambitious actions,” the group’s report advised.

Biden’s agenda will also be informed by California’s setbacks.

The rolling blackouts the state recently endured pointed to the need for more innovation, public investment and oversight to keep pace with green-energy goals. The state’s cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gases fell short in curbing pollution in marginalized communities, triggering protests that may have cost California’s chief air regulator a post in Biden’s Cabinet as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Likewise, the disastrous delays in delivering unemployment relief checks during the pandemic, and associated rampant levels of fraud, scuttled the Cabinet prospects of California’s labor secretary. (Biden did pick an official from the state government, Isabel Guzman, to run the Small Business Administration.)

The national movement to protect gig economy workers was dealt a damaging blow when California voters in November sided with ride-hailing companies and other technology firms, which were eager to carve big loopholes into the state’s landmark law meant to protect those workers.

Supporters of the policies say the setbacks in California are part of the road-testing. They signal to federal leaders what tweaks are needed before a national rollout.

One California policy Biden promises to replicate aims to reduce the high rate of Black women who die while giving birth or within a year of it. Though the program helped the state make significant progress driving down the overall maternal mortality rate, it didn’t narrow the racial gap. Black women still account for 40% of deaths. The Biden camp says it will propose additional actions to confront racial inequities in healthcare.

In the case of the gig worker rules California created — and which Biden favors — activists in the state are looking to the president-elect to revive protections like those undermined by Proposition 22. Robert Reich, Labor secretary in the Clinton administration, said in an email that Biden could potentially preempt California’s industry-backed initiative with federal action, a move he said would be “vitally important.”

Whether Biden will go that far is unknown. Either way, the incoming administration has made clear it is looking to California as it moves to overhaul labor rules. The state has “the nation’s foremost set of laws to protect workers,” Reich wrote. Those laws, he said, give employees more rights than anywhere else in the country on issues that include overtime, employer retaliation, wage theft, discrimination and protection from sexual harassment.

“We’ve shown you can have progressive policies and enjoy economic growth,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from Silicon Valley.

Khanna recently touted those policies on a podcast hosted by progressive filmmaker Michael Moore. The title of the episode was notable considering that Moore savaged the Bay Area in his 1989 film “Roger and Me” as a hornet’s nest of self-indulgent liberals.

He called last month’s show “Make America California Again!”

After a Quiet Meeting in Vegas, Lawsuits Against Big Tech to be Filed

Posted on January 19, 2021January 19, 2021 by Denise Simon

Source: A group of conservatives and Trump administration officials quietly met in Las Vegas over the weekend to discuss issues including ‘woke tech’, ‘restoring law’, and the ‘new slave power,’ according to a report by Protocol.

The event, known as the ‘Digital Statecraft Summit,’ was hosted by the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank.

A copy of the event’s agenda obtained by Protocol reportedly listed high-profile speakers including United States Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, former deputy national security adviser for President Trump, Michael Anton, and the current acting head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Adam Candeub.

A source familiar with Kratsios’ planned remarks told Protocol he intended to speak about artificial intelligence and China.

Anton, who served as deputy national security adviser under Trump from February 2017 to April 2018, was slated to be on ‘The New Slave Power’ panel. Anton recently wrote an essay entitled ‘Blue America Needs Red America’ for Claremont’s American Mind publication, in which he suggested that Democrats were ‘openly talking about staging a coup’ in an effort to ‘command and oppress’ Republicans. Also on the panel with Anton was conservative blogger Curtis Yarvin, also known as Mencius Moldbug, who once wrote in a blog post: “although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff.”

While it was unclear what Candeub was scheduled to speak about, Mother Jones reported that he is known to have ties to white nationalists, including writing four Wall Street Journal op-eds with Marcus Epstein and representing Jared Taylor in a lawsuit against Twitter in 2018.

It was also unclear what Paxton was slated to speak about. Paxton is leading a multi-state antitrust action against Google and was part of an effort to overturn the results of the presidential election based on unfounded claims of election fraud in four states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden. The FBI is currently investigating claims that Paxton abused his power to benefit a wealthy donor. A representative for Paxton did not immediately return FOX Business’ request for comment.

John Eastman

In addition, Chapman University professor and conservative legal scholar John Eastman, who helped to rally Trump supporters outside the White House before the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 which left five people dead, was reportedly slated to speak.

Also listed on the agenda was newly confirmed FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington, but he told Protocol he did not end up attending.

“Despite initial plans to do so, I did not attend or otherwise participate in the Claremont event this weekend, and I did not prepare or submit remarks,” Simington said.

An attendee told Protocol that the tone of the event was expected to to be “very critical of tech, very pro some type of intervention.”

‘There’s going to be some discrepancy and debate around what intervention looks like,’ the individual said.

The attendee added that the Claremont Institute appeared to keep information about the summit ‘under wraps’, noting that no information was provided on who would be speaking just hours before the event was set to kick off and that the organization did not appear to be promoting the event on social media Saturday as the first panels began.

Protocol reported that the event also took place amid a spike in COVID cases in the Las Vegas area, and that Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams declined to answer the outlet’s questions about “the new slave power” panel and what COVID-19 safety protocols were being implemented.

“The Claremont Institute has been a leading voice against political censorship by the Big Tech oligarchs, and we have no interest in commenting on an obvious hatchet job by a publication so clearly beholden to the pieties of Silicon Valley,” Williams said in an email to Protocol. “Your questions are riddled with false premises, but we welcome the fire.”

The Claremont Institute did not immediately return FOX Business’ request for comment.

The meeting comes as conservatives have argued that that they are being unfairly targeted by tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon.

Facebook and Twitter suspended President Trump earlier this month, citing a ‘risk of further incitement of violence’ after deeming a series of posts related to the violence at the Capitol as inflammatory.

Meanwhile, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R.-Ga., regained access to her Twitter account after it was temporarily locked on Sunday over “multiple violations” on the social media platform related to claims of election fraud in the presidential and Senate runoff elections.

“Dear @Twitter, Contrary to how highly you think of yourself and your moral platitude, you are not the judge of humanity. God is,” Greene wrote, adding that Twitter is “becoming boring” since President Trump was permanently banned after the Capitol riot.

In addition, alternative social media platform Parler is suing Amazon Web Services for a breach of contract and antitrust violation, alleging it acted with “political animus” after severing ties with the company for failure to moderate “egregious content’ related to the riot.

Parler’s lawyer, David Groesbeck, argued during a hearing last week that the company would suffer irreparable harm if it was forced to permanently close and that it is in the public interest to restore the platform’s service. The platform’s chief executive officer, John Matze, said the platform would return to users soon in a status update on Sunday evening.

WASHINGTON – State attorneys general are planning a third lawsuit against Alphabet Inc’s Google, this one focused on the search and advertising giant’s Play Store for Android phones, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The lawsuit is expected to be filed in February or March, the sources said, and it would follow complaints about Google’s management of its Play Store even though the company was originally seen as more open about its app store than Apple.

Including a Justice Department lawsuit filed against Google in October, the possible new action would be the fourth government lawsuit brought against the Silicon Valley company since late 2020. All allege that Google abused its dominance of the internet search business or otherwise broke antitrust law.

Google bans apps with objectionable content from its store, and further requires that some apps use the company’s payment tools and pay Google as much as 30 percent of their revenue.

Those and related policies prompted criticism from app developers, particularly when Google said last year it would ramp up enforcement. Google’s Play Store is far more widely used than similar products from Amazon, Samsung, Huawei and others.

The probe will be headed by attorneys general of New York, Utah and North Carolina, and other states are also expected to join, one of the sources said.

Asked to comment on the possible new legal action, Google said in a statement that its Android mobile operating system has allowed users access to multiple app stores, which means that developers have options.

“Most Android devices ship with at least two app stores preinstalled, and consumers are able to install additional app stores,” Sameer Samat, vice president of Android and Google Play, said in a statement.

“This openness means that even if a developer and Google do not agree on business terms the developer can still distribute on the Android platform,” he said.

Video game maker Epic Games sued Google and Apple separately in US district court in August, accusing the companies of using their dominance to charge app developers an “exorbitant” fee of 30 percent on sales and of imposing other restrictions.

Apple, whose app store does not directly compete with Google’s because it is not compatible with Android devices, is under Justice Department investigation for its policies.

After more than a year of investigations into the four major tech platforms, including Facebook, Amazon and Apple, the Justice Department was first out of the gate with a lawsuit against Google focused on its search business and search advertising.

In addition, two groups of state attorneys general filed lawsuits last year, one led by Texas and focused on advertising. The other targeted Google’s alleged efforts to extend its dominance in search to newer markets, like voice assistants.

State Dept Fact Sheet: Wuhan Institute of Virology

Posted on January 18, 2021January 18, 2021 by Denise Simon

Update: Video has emerged where scientists were bitten by bats and had disregard to proper safety protocols. Scientists at the the Wuhan Institute of Virology 'admitted to being attacked by bats' Go here for the summary and video.

U.S. State Department

China lied about origin of coronavirus, leaked ...

For more than a year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin, choosing instead to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation. Nearly two million people have died. Their families deserve to know the truth. Only through transparency can we learn what caused this pandemic and how to prevent the next one.

The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus—known as SARS-CoV-2—was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic. Alternatively, a laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was compounded by asymptomatic infection. Scientists in China have researched animal-derived coronaviruses under conditions that increased the risk for accidental and potentially unwitting exposure.

Mystery virus found in Wuhan resembles bat viruses but not ...

The World Health Organization on 9 January requested sequence data, a spokesperson in Geneva says, and many scientists urge the country to make the sequence public quickly, but the decision is up to the top leadership of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, says Xu, who is director of the Beijing-based State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, part of China CDC. (The center’s head, George Gao, did not respond to emails from Science seeking comment.)

Xu says the investigation is being led by China CDC but numerous groups in other government agencies are involved. “Plenty of people are working on the outbreak,” he says. The role of the evaluation committee Xu leads is to review all the findings and make recommendations to the National Health Commission. Xu also said the novel coronavirus resembles known bat viruses, but not the coronaviruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).

The CCP’s deadly obsession with secrecy and control comes at the expense of public health in China and around the world. The previously undisclosed information in this fact sheet, combined with open-source reporting, highlights three elements about COVID-19’s origin that deserve greater scrutiny:

1. Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):

The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one.
The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019. Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness.

2. Research at the WIV:

Starting in at least 2016 – and with no indication of a stop prior to the COVID-19 outbreak – WIV researchers conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar). The WIV became a focal point for international coronavirus research after the 2003 SARS outbreak and has since studied animals including mice, bats, and pangolins.
The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including “RaTG13,” which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.
WHO investigators must have access to the records of the WIV’s work on bat and other coronaviruses before the COVID-19 outbreak. As part of a thorough inquiry, they must have a full accounting of why the WIV altered and then removed online records of its work with RaTG13 and other viruses.

3. Secret military activity at the WIV:

Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practice for Beijing. For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.
Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.
The United States and other donors who funded or collaborated on civilian research at the WIV have a right and obligation to determine whether any of our research funding was diverted to secret Chinese military projects at the WIV.

Today’s revelations just scratch the surface of what is still hidden about COVID-19’s origin in China. Any credible investigation into the origin of COVID-19 demands complete, transparent access to the research labs in Wuhan, including their facilities, samples, personnel, and records.

As the world continues to battle this pandemic – and as WHO investigators begin their work, after more than a year of delays – the virus’s origin remains uncertain. The United States will continue to do everything it can to support a credible and thorough investigation, including by continuing to demand transparency on the part of Chinese authorities.