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.

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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.

U.S. Govt Spent Over $2.3 Million Injecting Puppies With Cocaine

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

The experiment, revealed through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the White Coat Waste Project, follows previously unearthed studies funded by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Anthony Fauci that “debarked” beagle puppies.

Seven six-month-old Beagle puppies were forced to wear a drug-injecting jacket that allowed them to be dosed with cocaine again and again and again for months, along with an ‘experimental compound,’ to see how the two drugs interacted.

The year-long experiment, which began in September 2020, was filmed so research could evaluate the puppies’ adverse reactions” to the drugs. Prior to the drugs being administered, the puppies were forced to undergo surgery, where they were implanted with a “telemetry unit” to monitor their vital signs throughout the experiment.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Institute on Drug Abuse and costed taxpayers of $2.3 million. More here.

But hold on…Dr. Fauci…Frankenstein was up to more disgusting funding….

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding $27 million in studies marked for use of fetal tissue, according to a new analysis.

The White Coat Waste Project (WCW), which opposes animal experimentation, looked through NIH data to uncover the scope of funding, which includes support for things like transplanting fetal lungs, liver and thymus into mice.

The majority of the reported funding – 79.6% – comes from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is run by White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci. Overall, NIH expects to spend $88 million on this type of research in fiscal year (FY) 22.

NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not respond to Fox News’ requests for comment.

Fauci’s institute has come under fire for research surrounding the coronavirus, among other things. More recently, WCW uncovered an experiment in which dogs were injected with cocaine. Other experiments involving humanized mice have surfaced.

One study involved humanizing mice through “reconstitution with human fetal liver (17 to 22 weeks of gestational age).” So far, that project has received funding through multiple NIAID grants, including one with more than $20 million between 2014-2018.

Another study, funded by the National Eye Institute, entailed studying fetal eye cells. That study says the eye cells were obtained from Advanced Biosciences Resources, which has come under fire for its connections to Planned Parenthood. Fetal lungs were also incorporated as part of federally funded research with the University of Wyoming and University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.

The conservative watchdog Judicial Watch previously released documents showing that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sought “fresh” fetal organs from ABR. In one email, the FDA’s Dr. Kristina Howard tells ABR’s procurement manager Perrin Larton that her company “should be prepaid for $12K of tissue purchases.”

Exhibit from NIH-funded study utilizing fetal lungs, liver and thymus. (National Library of Medicine)

The issue will likely continue to gain political attention as legislators learn more about various research projects, including those involving human-animal hybrids. Last year, the Senate rejected an amendment geared toward criminalizing participation in research that created certain chimeras, or human-animal hybrids, in expectation that the federal government could lift a moratorium on funding for those projects.

“Dr. Fauci’s funding of research using aborted fetal tissue is disgusting and indefensible,” said Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich. “My Safe RESEARCH Act would ensure that scientists can continue important research so long as they’re not using fetal tissue from abortions.” More details here.

Gotta wonder how come not one person in the Biden administration has been critical of this abuse…but we certainly understand why so many loyal religious groups have filed lawsuits and pushed back. What about the Vatican….anyone???

The JFK Assassination Debate Rages on

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

Last December, President Biden authorized additional JFK assassination records to be declassified and released. The documents were so banal, there was virtually no additional chatter or reporting on it.

In case you missed it, click here for those additional documents. There may be some new names in the released documents and we should be asking what other countries have contributed to the whole affair such as Mexico….

Under the law, as of October 1997, ALL the JFK files in the National Archives were to be released and Biden issued an extension to the release date.

In part: Section 1. Policy. In the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (44 U.S.C. 2107 note) (the “Act”), the Congress declared that “all Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy . . . should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination.” The Congress also found that “most of the records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are almost 30 years old, and only in the rarest cases is there any legitimate need for continued protection of such records.” Almost 30 years since the Act, the profound national tragedy of President Kennedy’s assassination continues to resonate in American history and in the memories of so many Americans who were alive on that terrible day; meanwhile, the need to protect records concerning the assassination has only grown weaker with the passage of time. It is therefore critical to ensure that the United States Government maximizes transparency, disclosing all information in records concerning the assassination, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.

Sec. 2. Background. The Act permits the continued postponement of disclosure of information in records concerning President Kennedy’s assassination only when postponement remains necessary to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure. Since 2018, executive departments and agencies (agencies) have been reviewing under this statutory standard each redaction they have proposed that would result in the continued postponement of full public disclosure. This year, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has been reviewing whether it agrees that each redaction continues to meet the statutory standard. The Archivist of the United States (Archivist), however, has reported that “unfortunately, the pandemic has had a significant impact on the agencies” and NARA and that NARA “require[s] additional time to engage with the agencies and to conduct research within the larger collection to maximize the amount of information released.” The Archivist has also noted that “making these decisions is a matter that requires a professional, scholarly, and orderly process; not decisions or releases made in haste.” The Archivist therefore recommends that the President “temporarily certify the continued withholding of all of the information certified in 2018” and “direct two public releases of the information that has” ultimately “been determined to be appropriate for release to the public,” with one interim release later this year and one more comprehensive release in late 2022.

Meanwhile, an expert forensic pathologist. Cyril Wecht has just published a new book “The JFK Assassination Dissected”.

Wecht’s latest book, “The JFK Assassination Dissected” (Exposit Books), summarizes his six decades of research into the subject, and pokes holes in the conclusion made by the seven-man Warren Commission that Oswald, without any help, shot and killed Kennedy when his motorcade drove past the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

“Young people are still being taught that the 35th president was murdered by a lone gunman, and that is simply bulls–t,” Wecht boomed during an interview at his modest office in downtown Pittsburgh last month.

Oswald “had almost certainly been a CIA agent of some kind,” says Wecht, but the directive to kill may have come from higher up. Allen Dulles, director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961, had overseen the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion to oust Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and had reason to be disgruntled. Dulles also ended up in prime position to participate in a coverup, Wecht conjectured.

“Kennedy had fired Allen Dulles because he was really pissed off about what the CIA was doing,” said Wecht. “Then who gets appointed to the Warren Commission? Dulles. It stinks to high heaven.”

I’ve been working on the book for six years.”

The former coroner of Allegheny County, Pa., Wecht is both a trained lawyer and doctor who has conducted more than 17,000 autopsies and also provided expert testimony on high-profile cases including the deaths of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey and Laci Peterson.

The first non-governmental forensic pathologist to gain access to the National Archives to examine the assassination materials in 1972, Wecht discovered and exposed the ghastly fact that the 35th president’s brain had vanished.

“As we sit and talk today, the president’s brain remains missing. Unaccounted for,” he said. More here from the NY Post.

In full disclosure, Dr. Wecht has been on my radio show twice for his previous book(s)and frankly, I agree we are not being told the whole truth about the assassination. Government employees including some in the FBI and CIA challenged evidence and the Warren Commission report as well.

Will we ever know?

Eastern Europe under Extraordinary Threat from Russia

Posted on January 24, 2022January 24, 2022 by Denise Simon

In part: Russia has been chipping away at the country since at least 2014, when the pro-Russian President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, lost an election, and Putin invaded the Crimea, the peninsula that sticks out into the Black Sea and separates it from the Sea of Azov to its northeast.

Stealth war

As part of Putin’s campaign, a war that isn’t quite a war, most authorities agree that Russian-based hackers mounted a cyberattack called NotPetya back in 2017. It was aimed primarily at Ukrainian institutions, but it also affected thousands of other systems as well. The White House later estimated that NotPetya caused about $10 billion worth of damage worldwide.

Now we come down to this week. On January 15, dozens of Ukrainian government computer systems were infected with malware disguised as ransomware. An infected computer displayed a demand for a certain ransom to be paid in Bitcoin, but what really happened is that the malware “renders the computer system inoperable,” ransom or no ransom.

Microsoft issued a statement saying that they observed these attacks aimed primarily at Ukrainian government agencies and closely-allied organisations, and that they had issued updates that will address the problems. But in the meantime, the Ukraine is suffering yet another cyberattack which appears to be instigated by Russia, although no firm evidence of the source has yet been forthcoming.

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The head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency told Military Times in November that Russia could launch an attack through Belarus.

source

Then there is the matter of Putin working to install a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) named former Ukrainian MP Yevhen Murayev as a potential Kremlin candidate and once again warned Russia of “severe costs” of activities to subvert Ukraine.

“The information being released today shines light on the extent of Russian activity designed to subvert Ukraine, and is an insight into Kremlin’s thinking,” UK foreign secretary Liz Truss said in a statement on Saturday.

Russia rejects UK claim

Russia on Sunday rejected a British claim that Russia was seeking to replace Ukraine’s government with a pro-Moscow administration.

“The disinformation spread by the British Foreign Office is more evidence that it is the Nato countries, led by the Anglo-Saxons, who are escalating tensions around Ukraine,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday. “We call on the British Foreign Office to stop provocative activities, stop spreading nonsense.” source

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Some other disturbing details:

The Russian Navy has announced plan gunnery and missile firing 160 nautical miles off Mizen Head. The exercises, from February 3rd to 8th, are just on the edge of the drop-off into deep water. It is also within Ireland’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Coming at a time of heightened tension between Russia and the West, this highlights Ireland’s strategic position.
Of all the world’s ocean, it is interesting that Russia selected this small area in the Irish EEZ. It is far from Russia’s operating bases and regular training areas. So the location seems chosen for strategic or political reasons.
Germany is actively collaborating with Russian armed aggression against Ukraine. The Estonians will tell the Germans to go to hell and the rest of NATO will back Estonia against the Moscow-Berlin axis.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is still in force. The Russian regime of state terrorism and the Putinversteher faction in Germany are allied to destroy the freedom and independence of Eastern Europe.
Germany has no business being in NATO when it aggressively thwarts the principle of collective security on which the alliance was founded. Germany has gone full Soviet with the new Chancellor.
Russian ally Germany refuses to permit Estonia to transfer artillery to Ukraine, giving a boost to the Russian army which is mobilized for an offensive.
The U.S. has ordered all family members of its embassy in Ukraine to evacuate amid rising tensions of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. State Department also said non-essential personnel could also leave the country at the U.S. government’s expense.

One more item. Since President Biden halted the United States from being energy independent which was achieved under President Trump, the United States no longer exports energy to Europe. In fact, conditions are so dire that the United States is actually buying dirty oil from Russia. Think of that. If Russia decides to punish the U.S. even more….you can bet the cost of gasoline at the pump with reach $8.00 to $10.00 a gallon.

Then there is the threat of the United States versus Russia in the Arctic and in Space…imagine escalating hostilities in those battle-spaces…

Meanwhile…Ukrainians are drilling for safety in fallout shelters.

Will Justice Sotomayor Recuse on the Mandate Cases?

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

If Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor reads the New York Times and watches CNN, then we clearly understand how her alleged knowledge of all things vaccines and mandates are so wrong and exaggerated. This Judge made statements during oral arguments that were wildly wrong. Yeesh. The Justices do gather after arguments are presented and confab on the cases and then collaborate with their clerks. We can only hope Sotomayor gets the memo on how wrong she is or she must recuse from the case(s) dealing with OSHA, vaccines and mandates.

If the Supreme Court rules on the side of the Federal government then the power of the government over all citizens is limitless and tyranny is in stone.

As noted by The Federalist in part for more details –>

Brian Fletcher, U.S. Principal Deputy Solicitor General, representing the federal government in Biden v. Missouri, told justices that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra should be allowed to keep the mandate. Challengers, however, noted that the rule forces a medical procedure on healthcare workers who could leave the workforce, and leave rural and poor populations in need of care vulnerable.

“Exercising this kind of power to force the individual to submit to a medical treatment has never ever been something that has been authorized by Congress or done by an agency on an emergency basis,” Louisiana Solicitor General Elizabeth Murrill said. “But I don’t think in this case that justifies them co-opting a quintessential state police power. In fact, the opposite is true.”

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch all seemed skeptical of the vaccine mandate on the grounds that the federal government was extending its reach into state issues. In his questioning, Gorsuch emphasized that the mandate seems less effective as a health and safety protocol and is more of an issue of control.

“Could CMS also implement regulations about exercise regimes?” Gorsuch asked, wondering if “substances that must be ingested by hospital employees” could be implemented “in the name of health and safety?”

Part of this control, Gorsuch hinted, is coming via funding threats.

“These statutes sometimes constitute, we’re told, 10 percent of all the funding state governments receive. This regulation affects, we’re told, 10 million healthcare workers and will cost over a billion dollars for employers to comply with. So what’s your reaction to that? Why isn’t this a regulation that effectively controls the employment and tenure of healthcare workers at hospitals, an issue Congress said the agency didn’t have the authority, that that should be left to the states to regulate?” Gorsuch asked.

In response, Sotomayor asserted her belief that “if you want my money your facility has to do this.”

“This is not an issue of power between the states and federal government. This is an issue of what right does the federal government [have] to dictate what it wants to buy,” Sotomayor said.

“Your Honor, it is a vaccine requirement masquerading as a condition of participation,” Jesus Osete, Missouri Deputy Attorney General, replied.

During the arguments, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Stephen Breyer, and the counsel arguing in favor of the mandate continued to spew misinformation about COVID-19 and the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. Kagan repeatedly lied that vaccinated workers couldn’t transmit the virus despite numerous admissions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the jab doesn’t stop viral spread and data showing a significant number of breakthrough COVID cases.

“All the Secretary is doing here is to say to providers, you know what? Basically, the one thing you can’t do is to kill your patients. So you have to get vaccinated so that you’re not transmitting the disease that can kill elderly Medicare patients, that can kill sick Medicaid patients,” Kagan said. “I mean, that seems like a pretty basic infection prevention measure. You can’t be the carrier of disease.”

She later claimed, without evidence, that “people are not showing up to hospitals because they’re afraid of getting COVID from staff.”

Breyer, who used rising COVID-19 case numbers to justify his support for the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for the private sector, also lied about the shot and COVID hospitalizations.

“There are 750,000 people got this yesterday, but the hospitals are full to overflowing, that there is a problem worse than diptheria,” Breyer said. “They’re filling up hospital beds and others are dying because they can’t get in. Okay. Now public interest, call it something else, call it what you might, but it seems to me, it’s hard for me to believe, but it seems to me that every minute that these things are not in effect, thousands of more people are getting this disease. And we have some discretionary power.”