$30 Million in Grants for Kits of Crack, Cocaine and Meth, no Really

Posted on February 8, 2022February 9, 2022 by Denise Simon

Update –> There is a BIG mess going on in DC about how ‘crack pipes’ are part of the ‘safe smoking kits’….HHS Secretary and the White House are saying that crack pipes are not included in the distribution…yeah okay…but hold on fact checkers….upon doing more checking seems our own government was funding a crack pipe study in Mexico….you know that Dr. Fauci agency….now we may know where this all started.

This is the page regarding the crack pipe study we paid for in 2019 in Mexico.

This is the screenshot in case it goes away…giggles:

When government become an illicit drug distributor….a bridge too far?

Source: In the name of harm reduction, the substance abuse arm of the Health and Human Services Agency will begin providing funds to help distribute “safe smoking kits” for the consumption of various illicit drugs like crack cocaine and crystal meth.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (SAMHSA) has allocated roughly $30 million for a Harm Reduction Program Grant, which includes funding for syringe exchange programs, the opioid reversal drug naloxone, test kits to detect fentanyl and “safe smoking kits/supplies,” among other more traditional measures, like HIV testing and safer sex resources.

A grant program funded by the Biden administration will furnish syringes and “safe smoking kits” among other items as a means to advancing equity.

The deadline for the $30 million program is Monday, with the Department of Health and Human Services distributing funds to nonprofit groups and local governments. Among the items the grant will pay for are syringes and “safe smoking kits/supplies.”The kits will allow users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and other illicit substances. source

Harm reduction efforts, like testing for infectious diseases, needle exchanges and naloxone distribution programs, are nothing new, but providing federal taxpayer funds for paraphernalia used to smoke drugs is.

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Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for adults 18-45 and this is how the Biden admin is responding: https://t.co/rI6DxzazTv

— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) February 7, 2022

An HHS spokesperson reportedly confirmed to The Washington Free Beacon these “safe smoking kits” will provide pipes for the consumption of “any illicit substance” to reduce the risk of infection, which can potentially occur through cuts and sores.

Seattle previously distributed meth pipes to residents in 2015, according to Reuters, but it’s reportedly hard to tell the benefit such a program can have.

“It is plausible the intervention could be effective,” said Matthew Golden, a Seattle and King County disease control official and a University of Washington medical professor, when the program was launched. “It’s simply an unstudied idea.”

One nonprofit said it had conducted research which determined meth users would be less likely to inject the drug if given access to pipes, but there is little evidence to back up such a claim, Reuters reported.

San Francisco has handed out crack pipes as well, according to local reporting, where allegedly an estimated 25,000 people actively inject drugs.

The SAMHSA grant’s $30 million will be spread across three years, and the money will be prioritized for “underserved communities that are greatly impacted by substance use disorder (SUD).”

Other measures funded by the grant include harm reduction vending machines – including the contents to stock them, infectious disease test kits and medicines, vaccination services and wound care supplies.

The National Desk reached out to SAMHSA to see if the “safe smoking kits” will also be available at harm reduction vending machines across the country but did not receive an immediate response in time for publication. This story will be updated if a response is obtained.

China has Fully Loyalty of Much of America

Posted on February 8, 2022February 8, 2022 by Denise Simon

It does not begin and end with zero consequence of China for all things pandemic….it is much much worse. Consider all the items below and then apply critical thinking on why America is so subservient to the Chinese Communist Party.

The list is hardly complete but here is a good start:

Dr. Fauci –>Source: Adam Hott, who works on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Sequencing Evidence-Generating Research group, is also affiliated with the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA). He serves on the controversial group’s education committee, which seeks to “brings together resources in K12 and higher education to apply research, expertise, and new entrants to the workforce to US-China collaboration.”
The unearthing of the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA) ties to Chinese foreign influence groups follow reports of Chinese Communist Party members and firms buying up American farmland, raising national security concerns among lawmakers.

In addition to partnering with various branches of the Chinese regime, the USHCA also is “proudly working with” the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).

The organization is an integral component of the Chinese Communist Party’s “United Front,” an effort that seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the U.S. government.
Then there is Hunter Biden and the whole Biden family.Source: A grand jury subpoena was issued 17 months before the 2020 election for Hunter Biden’s bank transactions involving the Bank of China, a corruption watchdog has found, raising concerns that damaging material about then-candidate Joe Biden was hidden from voters.
The order sent by the Department of Justice to JP Morgan Chase bank asked for the records of any international financial transactions for the past five years involving Hunter, his uncle James Biden and former business partners Devon Archer and Eric Schwerin, according to federal documents.

The anti-corruption nonprofit Marco Polo, founded by former Trump administration official Garrett Ziegler, obtained the filing, which targets the financial ties between the four men and the Bank of China.

The subpoena was issued by Delaware’s US Attorney David Weiss on May 15, 2019. At the time, Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, was a presidential candidate.
. source
Perhaps the worst of it all –> and it is a long one…sit back and process as you read it. Source: A new, comprehensive report by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, titled “Corporate Complicity Scorecard,” reveals what these companies have traded away and how much their Faustian bargain with the CCP has endangered all of us.The report, produced jointly by VOC and Horizon Advisory, evaluates eight well-known American corporations — Amazon, Apple, Dell, Facebook, GE, Google, Intel, and Microsoft. It presents “broad-ranging assessments of the nature of American corporations’ involvement in China” based on a set of indicators, including compliance with Chinese data regimes and supply chain exposure to forced labor risk. The report assigns a letter grade between A to F to the companies, with Facebook and Google receiving the highest score of “B,” while GE, Intel, and Microsoft got the lowest score of “F.”
According to the VOC report, these American companies’ complicity endangers everyone else for several reasons. It exposes U.S. industrial supply chains to China’s forced labor and other human rights atrocities. It empowers a strategic competitor while hollowing out U.S. industrial capacity. It also makes U.S. industry a conduit for the Chinese government’s vast information collection (i.e., surveillance programs). Lastly, it makes U.S. industry a channel for Chinese influence and propaganda abroad.

All eight companies’ complicity is also endangering their long-term survival because through the “Made in China 2025” initiative, the Chinese government has been developing domestic competitors, intending to become “self-reliant” in strategically essential technologies. Shockingly, these American companies seem to fail to recognize that their technology transfers and billions of dollar investment in China will end up creating their own eventual replacements in this market.

Furthermore, some of these companies have engaged “in political lobbying in the U.S. in ways that ultimately serves Beijing’s interests while potentially undermining the values and principles that undergird the western democratic order.”

Intel Gets an ‘F’

Intel sent a letter earlier this year to suppliers advising them not to source from Xinjiang, without mentioning either forced labor or genocide committed by the CCP against Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in the region. Still, the company promptly apologized to China after its letter drew backlash from state media and Chinese nationalists.

The VOC report provides insights into Intel’s engagement in China. The company has a prominent presence in the country, including 17 campuses, at least two production sites, and “a series of innovation and R&D centers across China.” The company has built extensive ties to Chinese government agencies. For instance, the company has partnered with the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Automation (CASIA), a “core contributor to China’s military and military-civil fusion programs.”

Intel also collaborated with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT), a “leading state entity charged with implementing China’s military-civil fusion national strategy.” The report finds “Intel executives continue to engage with MIIT representatives in fields relevant to military-civil fusion, even as tensions between the US government and China escalate and risks posed by Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy become more evident.”

Intel’s partnership with Chinese companies is also problematic. The company is a long-time major supplier to Hikvision, a Chinese state-owned manufacturer and supplier of surveillance equipment. The two companies launched a comprehensive partnership in artificial intelligence in 2017.

After the Trump administration added Hikvision to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List and barred it from buying restricted components from the United States in 2019, former Intel Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan reportedly vowed to use “Intel’s global operating capabilities to reduce the impact on customers.” Later that year, several U.S. technology firms, including Intel and Microsoft, issued a joint statement “calling for then-President Trump not to impose tariffs on Chinese laptops and tablets.”

The VOC report also finds that “Intel technology was being used in surveillance systems in Xinjiang” and “Intel had invested in and provided technologies to a company embedded in Xinjiang and supported by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.” Intel essentially plays a critical role in enabling the Chinese government to build a digital prison in Xinjiang and monitor every move by millions of Uyghur Muslims.

Microsoft Also Gets an ‘F’

Microsoft also received a grade of “F.” The VOC report finds that “Microsoft has a significant, and growing, network of innovation centers, data centers, joint laboratories, and other technology hubs in China. Many of these have been established in partnership with the Chinese government or government-tied entities.”

For example, Microsoft has built at least 10 data centers in China, all operated by a local Chinese partner, 21Vianet. In compliance with China’s data security laws, all data collected at these centers are accessible to the Chinese government.

Microsoft has also partnered with Chinese companies to tailor its products to meet the Chinese government’s needs. A 2021 report from Top10VPN found that many Chinese government surveillance and censorship organs “use Windows products in their security and surveillance systems.”

Like Intel, Microsoft has established strategic cooperation agreements with Chinese companies that “the US government has identified as tied to the Chinese military or as an export restriction concern.” For example, one of Microsoft’s strategic partners is Dajing Innovations (DJI), a leader in civilian drones and imaging technology. The Trump administration put DJI on the Department of Commerce’s sanctioned Entity List in 2020. Microsoft has yet to sever its business ties with DJI.

At least three Chinese suppliers of Microsoft were found to involve forced labor in Xinjiang. However, Microsoft has maintained business relationships with these suppliers. In addition, the company continues to invest in R&D in China “even as tensions between the US and China escalate—and Beijing’s technological ambitions have become broadly recognized as posing risks for global human rights and security.”

Why GE Received an ‘F’

GE is the third company that receives an “F.” Similar to Intel and Microsoft, GE’s many partnerships in China “appear to involve technology-sharing, including with core players in China’s military, military-civil fusion, and surveillance system. Those partnerships have also granted military-tied Chinese players positions of leverage in GE’s supply chains, critical to both America’s national security and its manufacturing base.”

Since GE is also a key contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense, these partnerships and technology-sharing agreements are especially troubling.

Losing Strategy

The VOC report gave the other five companies slightly better scores than “F.” But make no mistake, all of these companies have similarly “supported Beijing’s military modernization, the surveillance state, and human rights violations in exchange for access to China’s market.”

As the great power competition between the U.S. and China intensifies, corporations cannot pretend this is business as usual. Whether they like it or not, corporations are increasingly at the center of the Sino-U.S. geopolitical conflict. These American companies should never forget what made them successful in the first place.

In the words of former Attorney General William Barr, American companies are beneficiaries of “the American free enterprise system, the rule of law, and the security afforded by America’s economic, technological, and military strength.” China’s authoritarian regime is not a “hospitable one for institutions that depend on free markets, free trade, or the free exchange of ideas,” Barr said.

The VOC scorecard reminds these American companies that acquiescing to Beijing is a lose-lose strategy and will endanger all of us in the long run.

Back in 2007, Bill Gates told Fortune that he expected China to be Microsoft’s biggest market, “though it might take 10 years.”. Those comments were made during a visit to Beijing when Gates was awarded an honorary degree from Tsinghua University and met with four members of China’s ruling Politburo. More detail

The Great Lockdown Lie

Posted on February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 by Denise Simon

It is almost being admitted by the CDC and the Biden administration that Covid and Omicron is over. Hospital vacancy is in a good place and those affected by any type of variant are being treated by countless therapeutics with recorded success. Meanwhile, the lockdown and mask policies across the country is finally being evaluated and rightly so. But the mainstream media just refuses to publish new truths and statistics.

NR: The authors of a new paper on the impact of Covid-19 lockdown measures may also have to go into hiding, for revealing their true impact on everyday people. The paper from Johns Hopkins University, “A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality,” compares several dozen studies of the impact of lockdown measures in the early part of the pandemic. The authors conclude that “lockdowns have had little or no effect on COVID-19 mortality.” This review of basically all the relevant studies demolishes the elites’ entire justification for ruinous lockdowns.

The authors, hailing from Denmark, Sweden, and the U.S. (the American, Steve Hanke, is a contributor to this publication) sifted through thousands of studies to focus on 34 that met their search criteria, looking at lockdowns all around the world. They then compared the data and conclusions.

The paper starts by noting that “an often cited model simulation study by researchers at the Imperial College London (Ferguson et al. (2020)) predicted that a suppression strategy based on a lockdown would reduce COVID-19 mortality by up to 98%.” The Imperial College simulation was among the sources used by public-health authorities to justify the earliest lockdowns. It turned out to be more than 98 percent wrong.

According to the authors, the most-precise studies found no statistically significant effect of lockdowns on mortality. Looking at the 24 studies from which excess mortality rates could be calculated in comparison to a standardized metric for severity of lockdowns, the authors estimated that severe lockdowns may have reduced Covid-19 mortality by perhaps 2 percent. That amounts to perhaps 1/20th the number of people who die from the flu every year, and to save people from the flu, our public-health authorities resort to little beyond facilitating the provision of flu shots.

But on further investigation, the impact appears to have been even smaller than that. “Indeed, according to stringency index studies, lockdowns in Europe and the United States reduced only COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average.” In summary, “Based on the stringency index studies, we find little to no evidence that mandated lockdowns in Europe and the United States had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality rates.”

Some studies actually found that lockdowns increased Covid-19 mortality, particularly in the case of the most severe “shelter in place” lockdowns: “Although this appears to be counterintuitive, it could be the result of an (asymptomatic) infected person being isolated at home under a [shelter-in-place order] can infect family members with a higher viral load causing more severe illness.”

According to some studies, lockdowns that limit gatherings may have increased Covid-19 mortality by as much as 1.6 percent. The authors speculate that because lockdowns limited peoples’ access to safe outdoor places where they could gather without masks, the lockdowns pushed people to meet at less-safe (indoor) places privately. “Indeed, we do find some evidence that limiting gatherings was counterproductive and increased COVID-19 mortality.”

The authors found similar results for mask mandates, though the relevant studies were more contradictory, likely due to small sample sizes. (The study reviews lockdowns in the early pandemic, when mask mandates were not uniformly adopted). The much richer data set from other airborne influenzas found that “wearing a mask probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory-confirmed influenza compared to not wearing a mask.”

The authors did find that “only business closure consistently shows evidence of a negative relationship with COVID-19 mortality, but the variation in the estimated effect is large. Three studies find little to no effect, and three find large effects.” Moreover, the most effective business closures appear to be bar closures.

One of the study’s more depressing findings is that lockdowns appear to have been heavily driven by intergovernmental peer pressure. “In short,” the authors note, “it is not the severity of the pandemic that drives the adoption of lockdowns, but rather the propensity to copy policies initiated by neighboring countries.”

Further, the review uncovered a significant disconnect between the data and the conclusions drawn in several papers. “We base our interpretations solely on the empirical estimates and not on the authors’ own interpretation of their results,” the authors write.

Where the authors found significant impact on mortality was in people changing their own behavior as a result of relevant information about risks and mitigation. “What Bjork et al. (2021) find is that information and signaling is far more important than the strictness of the lockdown.” Milton Friedman must be smiling up above. According to the authors, “it should be clear that one important role for government authorities is to provide information so that citizens can voluntarily respond to the pandemic in a way that mitigates their exposure.”

The paper’s conclusion should close the book on all the lockdowns:

The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.

Other experts are starting to speak up along similar lines. Dr. Vinay Prasad of UC–San Francisco speculates in a series of tweets that the Biden administration is obsessed with pushing mandates on the low-risk population perhaps because it has few tools to push mandates on the high-risk population — nursing-home patients — but feels the need to do something. Driven to use the tools they have, the Biden administration has been forcing boosters on younger and younger children, even though we know that (a) they are at little risk of severe disease and virtually no risk if already vaccinated, (b) there is little evidence the boosters help young people at all, and (c) FDA officials are resigning in protest.

Dr. Prasad’s insight is strongly supported by another new study from a team of researchers spanning disciplines and institutions from University of Washington to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Oxford. The authors of the new study, “The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Policy: Why Mandates, Passports, and Segregated Lockdowns May Cause more Harm than Good,” warn that heavy-handed mandates are not scientifically based, raise basic ethical and human-rights concerns, and are eroding trust in both scientific and public-health authorities:

While COVID-19 vaccines have had a profound impact on decreasing global morbidity and mortality burdens, we argue that current population-wide mandatory vaccine policies are scientifically questionable, ethically problematic, and misguided. Such policies may lead to detrimental long-term impacts on uptake of future public health measures, including COVID-19 vaccines themselves as well as routine immunizations. Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport, and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarization, and adversely affects health and wellbeing. Mandating vaccination is one of the most powerful interventions in public health and should be used sparingly and carefully to uphold ethical norms and trust in scientific institutions.

It’s not just the mandates that are eroding trust in public institutions. On January 5, 2022, the State of California extended its indoor mask mandate through February 15. Violators face up to six months in jail.

That didn’t stop Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, San Francisco mayor London Breed, and California governor Gavin Newsom from whooping it up with “Magic” Johnson at the NFC Championship game last weekend, in pictures that are still up on Twitter:

Needless to say, nobody was wearing a mask, despite the fact that Johnson is immunocompromised with HIV — a significant comorbidity of Covid-19. Mayor Garcetti later clarified that he was holding his breath.

As for the workers down below, they can keep holding their breath, too.

Gotta wonder what Australia is thinking and going to do next…

SCOTUS frontrunner Ketanji Brown Jackson was an Advocate for Terror Suspects Housed at Gitmo

Posted on February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 by Denise Simon

Supreme Court frontrunner Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was an active and dedicated advocate for terror suspects housed at Guantanamo Bay, contrary to press accounts and her own representations.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks in February 2020 while being honored at the University of Chicago Law School’s Parsons Dinner. (Lloyd DeGrane via Wikimedia Commons)

Jackson has portrayed her work for the detainees as that of a disinterested professional fulfilling an assignment. But a Washington Free Beacon review of court filings dating back to 2005 indicates that Jackson was deeply committed to equal treatment for accused terrorists. Her advocacy was zealous and often resembled ideological cause lawyering, even in her capacity as a public defender. At times, she flirted with unsubstantiated left-wing theories that were debunked by government investigators. On other occasions, she accused Justice Department lawyers of egregious misconduct with little evidence.

As a federal public defender, Jackson represented a Guantanamo detainee accused of attacking a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. She continued to advocate on behalf of detainees and attack Bush-era detention policies in the Supreme Court after she left public service for private practice.

President Joe Biden’s approval numbers tumbled after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer. A retread of the War on Terror could be unwelcome for the administration, especially as new developments reveal the extent of the government’s ineptness. Leaked Situation Room documents released by Axios Wednesday show that top administration officials were scrambling to plan a mass evacuation of civilians as late as Aug. 14, the day before Taliban forces reached Kabul. The White House did not respond to the Free Beacon‘s request for comment.

Jackson’s public defender unit was charged with representing Guantanamo inmates who challenged their incarceration in a federal court in Washington, D.C. Jackson’s client was a detainee named Khiali-Gul, who maintained that he was an innocent man wrongfully detained.

“I had a job in Mr. Karzai’s government and I have done personal favors for the Americans and helped them,” Gul said in a 2005 court filing.

U.S. investigators reached quite different conclusions about Gul. A 2008 Defense Department assessment states that Gul was a Taliban intelligence officer and the likely leader of a terror cell near the city of Khost. The cell met at his home on Dec. 1, 2002, to plan a rocket attack on a coalition forward-operating base, which took place just hours after the gathering. A separate Defense assessment flagged a possible meeting with Osama bin Laden in November 2001.

In written exchanges with Republican lawmakers ahead of her confirmation to an appeals court last year, Jackson emphasized that she represented Gul in her capacity as a government lawyer duty-bound to advocate for all indigent defendants. She implied but did not say she did so under orders. The Washington Post presented the facts along those lines in a Jan. 27 story about her prospective nomination.

But filings Jackson submitted for Gul were hardly perfunctory. In 2005 she filed a petition on Gul’s behalf that went well beyond the particulars of his case to broadly assail Bush administration War on Terror policies. For example, she accused the government of pioneering torture tactics used at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq on Guantanamo inmates.

“Many of the most egregious interrogation techniques used in the Abu Ghraib detention center and other detention facilities in Iraq—such as the use of aggressive dogs to intimidate detainees, sexual humiliation, stress positions, and sensory deprivation—were pioneered at Guantanamo,” she wrote, by way of arguing her client was subject to inhumane confinement conditions.

Such allegations were common among Democratic lawmakers and left-wing advocacy groups. But a 2005 report of the Pentagon inspector general, much of which remains classified, rejects that assessment. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2005, Vice Admiral Albert Church rejected any such Abu Ghraib-Gitmo nexus.

Jackson also criticized the “extraordinary rendition” program, through which detainees were secretly transferred to countries where prolonged detention and torture could be practiced. Gul was never subject to the program, making the criticisms afield of the dispute. He was ultimately repatriated to his native Afghanistan.

Later in the course of Gul’s case, Jackson would accuse government lawyers of serious ethical breaches. In 2006, she asked the judge who presided over Gul’s case to sanction Justice Department lawyers over the government’s response to a rash of detainee suicides. Sanctions are reserved for serious misconduct and are always embarrassing to those involved. Penalties range from remedial classes to suspension or disbarment in the relevant court.

Three Guantanamo detainees committed suicide on June 10, 2006, by hanging themselves in their cells. Rear Admiral Harry Harris, who then commanded at Guantanamo, called the incident a coordinated protest act. The suicides followed a May uprising in which inmates attacked guards with fan blades and broken light fixtures, as well as revelations that some inmates were hoarding prescription medications.

The Defense Department on Dec. 20, 2014, announced Gul’s repatriation to Afghanistan under an executive order from then-president Barack Obama that required the intelligence community to determine whether Guantanamo detainees should be released, transferred, or prosecuted. The 2008 assessment predicted he would resume his extremist activities without close supervision.

The Free Beacon was unable to determine whether Gul reenlisted with the Taliban ahead of the terrorist group’s rapid conquest of Afghanistan in 2021. Other Guantanamo prisoners did so. Ex-detainee Gholam Ruhani maintained that he was “a simple shopkeeper who helped Americans” in court papers while fighting his five-year detention at the naval base. He was among the commandos who last August stormed the presidential palace, and he appeared on camera in former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani’s office cradling a machine gun and reciting the Quran.

Free Beacon has more details here.

Another source here has a very detailed resume.

Simply put, she is trouble and if nominated, you can bet the confirmation hearing will be wild.

Could it be that Europe has more Guts in Suing Google than the U.S.?

Posted on February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 by Denise Simon

Shame on our Congress but more…shame on the Justice Department for dragging it’s feet when it comes to anti-trust cases against big tech, especially Google.

Google is big…really big but perhaps $2.4 billion will get their attention…and that is just Europe. But then again, maybe not as Google just announced the following:

Google has completed the latest phase of construction at its data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, bringing its total investment in its Iowa campus to $5 billion.

A herd of deer outside the equipment yard of the Google data center campus in Council Bluffs, Iowa. (Photo: Google)

The investment milestone by Google is the latest data point on the extraordinary growth of the data center industry in Iowa, which is also home to Meta’s largest cloud campus and a massive build-out by Microsoft in West Des Moines. The Iowa cloud cluster shows the prominent role of the Midwest in cloud geography, providing a data distribution hub in the center of the United States.

***

Google-owner Alphabet faces a massive lawsuit in Europe.

It’s being sued by price-comparison firm PriceRunner for around $2.4 billion.

The Swedish company alleges the tech giant manipulated search results.

PriceRunner wants Google to pay compensation for profits it claims it has lost in the UK since 2008; and Sweden and Denmark since 2013.

A Google spokesperson said the company would defend the lawsuit in court.

It claimed changes made to shopping ads five years ago have worked successfully.

It also said PriceRunner chose not to use shopping ads on Google, so may not have seen the same successes as others.

But PriceRunner said it was ready to fight for years, with financing in place and steps prepared in the event it does not win.

In November Google lost an appeal against a fine of over $2.7 billion imposed by the European Commission in 2017.

It found that the search giant used its own price comparison shopping service to gain an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals.

The seven-year investigation came about due to complaints that Google distorted internet search results in favour of its own shopping service.

PriceRunner is currently in the process of being bought by payments firm Klarna.

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Pricerunner sues Google for SEK 22 billion - Gamingsym

Source: PriceRunner said Monday that it plans to take Google to court in Stockholm. It’s seeking compensation for damages in relation to a 2017 ruling from the European Commission that Google breached antitrust laws by giving preference to its own shopping comparison product, Google Shopping, through its popular search engine.

After a seven-year investigation into the practices, the EU executive body dealt Google a historic $2.7 billion fine. Google appealed the penalty, but in November 2021, the decision was upheld by the EU’s General Court. The verdict can still be appealed and taken to the EU’s highest court.

PriceRunner CEO Mikael Lindahl said the company launched its lawsuit following “extensive and thorough preparations.”

“We are of course seeking compensation for the damage Google has caused us during many years, but are also seeing this lawsuit as a fight for consumers who have suffered tremendously from Google’s infringement of the competition law for the past fourteen years and still today,” Lindahl said in a statement.

A Google spokesperson said the company looks forward to defending its case in court. The company made a number of changes in 2017 aimed at addressing the commission’s concerns.

“The changes we made to shopping ads back in 2017 are working successfully, generating growth and jobs for hundreds of comparison shopping services who operate more than 800 websites across Europe,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

“The system is subject to intensive monitoring by the EU Commission and two sets of outside experts. PriceRunner chose not to use shopping ads on Google, so may not have seen the same successes that others have.”

PriceRunner alleges Google has not complied with the commission’s ruling and is still abusing its dominant position among internet search engines. It expects the final damages to be “significantly higher” than the interim sum of 2.1 billion euros.

The company, which in November agreed to be taken over by Swedish fintech firm Klarna, wants Google to pay compensation for profits it lost in the U.K. since 2008, and in Sweden and Denmark from 2013 onward.

Klarna spokeswoman Aoife Houlihan said the company was “aware and supportive of this suit.”

“It is fundamental that all tech companies no matter where they operate, compete on the basis of their own merit with the best product and service and then gain consumers’ trust,” Houlihan told CNBC.

“European consumers have been denied real choice in shopping services for many years and this is one step to ensuring this ends now.”

PriceRunner says it’s the largest independent price comparison service in the Nordic region, with over 3.7 million products to select from 22,500 stores across 25 different countries.

Drug Enforcement Administration

Intel Gets an ‘F’

Microsoft Also Gets an ‘F’

Why GE Received an ‘F’

Losing Strategy

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks in February 2020 while being honored at the University of Chicago Law School’s Parsons Dinner. (Lloyd DeGrane via Wikimedia Commons)