US Congress approves WWII-like weapons program for Ukraine

Senate-approved “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act” clears the House, waives restrictions of arms deliveries

The US House of Representatives has approved a bill that would remove several constraints on sending weapons to Ukraine amid the ongoing Russian offensive. Adopted by the Senate earlier this month, the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act” revives the program Washington used to send military equipment to belligerents in WWII while officially staying neutral.

The final vote on Thursday afternoon was 417-10, with three members not voting. All of the Democrats voted in favor, while all of the ten members opposed were Republicans.

Introduced by Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), the bill was passed by the Senate on April 6, but the Democrat-dominated House adjourned for a two-week Easter recess before taking it up.

It authorizes the White House to “lend or lease defense articles” to Ukraine or any “Eastern European countries impacted by the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine to help bolster those countries' defense capabilities and protect their civilian populations from potential invasion or ongoing aggression.”

Cornyn’s bill does not create a new program, but rather makes it easier for President Joe Biden to send weapons to Kiev by suspending limitations imposed by two existing laws, one of which caps the length of the aid at five years.

However, the whole thing is conditioned on Ukraine having to pay for the “return of and reimbursement and repayment for defense articles loaned or leased” to it. Kiev’s ability to make such payments is questionable, since the Ukrainian government is currently asking the US and the EU for $7 billion per month just to keep paying salaries and pensions.

The lend-lease bill is separate from the ongoing US effort to send Kiev weapons from the Pentagon stockpiles. Biden has already blown through almost $3.5 billion authorized by Congress for the purpose, and is seeking more funding. However, it risks being held up if the Democrats insist on bundling it with their Covid-19 funding plan, as Republicans have warned they would only support a stand-alone bill.

“We don’t have the mechanism yet,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday.

The original lend-lease was enacted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in March 1941 – nine months before the US entered WWII – and amounted to $50.1 billion (980 billion in 2022 dollars) by September 1945, when the program ended. Most of the weapons and equipment went to the UK ($31.4 billion) with a $11.3 billion share going to the Soviet Union and another $7.4 billion to other countries. In theory, the aid was supposed to be repaid or returned, but the US accepted the lease of military bases abroad instead.

https://www.rt.com/russia/554628-congress-lend-lease-ukraine/

Moderna Asks FDA To Authorize Covid Vaccine For Children Under 6

The development comes after the company announced positive results in late March for a phase 2/3 study for children aged 6 months to under 6 years - which found that the vaccine had "lower efficacy" against the Omicron strain.

"Using the Phase 3 COVE study COVID-19 definition, vaccine efficacy in children 6 months to 2 years was 43.7% and vaccine efficacy was 37.5% in the 2 to under 6 years age group."

And while the New York Times says that "Parents of the roughly 18 million youngest Americans" have been "waiting for months for pediatric doses," a CDC study revealed that throughout the entire pandemic up until January 31, 2022, there were just 2,562 children up the age of four years-old who were hospitalized with Covid-19, and just 16 deaths (2 of them from Omicron).

So Moderna wants approval for a jab with efficacy as low a 37.5%, for a demographic which has a 0.000142% hospitalization rate and generally mild (to no) symptoms without vaccination.

Moderna’s clinical trial data showed that the antibody response of the youngest children compared favorably with that of adults ages 18 to 25, meeting the trial’s primary criterion for success. Although the trial was not big enough to measure vaccine effectiveness, Moderna said Thursday the vaccine appeared to be 51 percent effective against symptomatic infection among those younger than 2, and 37 percent effective among those 2 to 5. -NYT

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/moderna-asks-fda-authorize-covid-vaccine-children-under-6

>>16172354

botruth

Ex-NFL Player Jack Brewer Threatens Joy Reid with Legal Action

Brewer, a Christian, runs a foundation for fatherless kids, which Reid called "child abuse"

Former NFL player Jack Brewer has threatened MSNBC’s Joy Reid with a defamation lawsuit over remarks she made on his youth program. Brewer, along with a handful of other ex-NFL players, recently met with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in order to promote fatherhood. This displeased Reid, who framed Brewer’s meeting with DeSantis as “child abuse.”

Brewer helps run The Jack Brewer Foundation, which assists troubled youth with resources and extends Christian principles of hope to children.

After the DeSantis event, Reid lashed out at Jack Brewer’s inclusion of black children at the event, calling DeSantis an “anti-black” governor. The MSNBC host accused Brewer of “using” the children for personal gain, calling it “child abuse.”

“This mis-use of Black boys is tantamount to child abuse. I would really like to hear the back-story on who these kids were and how they wound up at a DeSantis event. Given how anti-Black DeSantis is, using Black children this way is extra sick,” Reid wrote in a tweet.

During an appearance Tucker Carlson Tonight, Jack Brewer descended what his foundation does. “I’m a man of god. And those children that you see are children of god,” Brewer told Tucker Carlson.

“God called us right now to face this CRT. These same kids, the majority of [these kids] are fatherless kids; kids who come into our center everyday and learn reading and math proficiency,” Brewer continued. “Then they go to public schools and their teachers tell them if they make a 50 (F) or a 60 (D), that’s OK because they’re black kids. We fight against that.”

https://nationalfile.com/ex-nfl-player-jack-brewer-threatens-joy-reid-with-legal-action/

The real Zelensky: from celebrity populist to unpopular Pinochet-style neoliberal

Ukrainian academic Olga Baysha details Volodymyr Zelensky’s embrace of widely loathed neoliberal policies, his repression of rivals, and how his actions fueled the current war with Russia.

A comedic actor who rose to the country’s highest office in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was virtually unknown to the average American, except perhaps as a bit player in the Trump impeachment theater. But when Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Zelensky was suddenly transformed to an A-list celebrity in US media. American news consumers were bombarded with images of a man who appeared overcome by the tragic events, possibly in over his head, but ultimately sympathetic. It didn’t take long for that image to evolve into the khaki-clad, tireless hero governing over a scrappy little democracy and single-handedly staving off the barbarians of autocracy from the east.

But beyond that carefully crafted Western media image is something much more complicated and less flattering. Zelensky was elected by 73 percent of the vote on a promise to pursue peace while the rest of his platform was vague. On the eve of the invasion, however, his approval rating had sunk to 31 percent due to the pursuit of deeply unpopular policies.

Ukrainian academic, Olga Baysha, author of Democracy, Populism, and Neoliberalism in Ukraine: On the Fringes of the Virtual and the Real, has studied Zelensky’s rise to power and how he has wielded that power since becoming president. In the interview below, Baysha discusses Zelensky’s embrace of neoliberalism and increasing authoritarianism, how his actions contributed to the current war; his counterproductive and self-absorbed leadership throughout the war, the complex cultural and political views and identities of Ukrainians, the partnership between neoliberals and the radical right during and after Maidan, and whether a Russian takeover of the entire Donbass region might be less popular among the local population than it would have been in 2014.

Tell us a bit about your background. Where are you from and how did you become interested in your current area of study?

I am an ethnic Ukrainian born in Kharkov, a Ukrainian city on the borderline with Russia, where my dad and other relatives are still living. Before the current war, Kharkov was one of Ukraine’s leading educational and scientific centers. The city’s residents pride themselves on living in the “intellectual capital” of Ukraine. In 1990, the first television company free from party control was established there; soon, its first news program went on air. By that time, I had already graduated from Kharkov University, and one day, I was invited to work as a journalist in this program by a university friend. Next day, without prior experience, I started reporting. In a couple of months, I was a news presenter. My meteoric career was not an exception.

New uncontrolled media, the number of which was increasing at a huge rate daily, demanded more and more media workers. In the overwhelming majority of cases, they were young ambitious people without any journalistic education or life experience. What united us was the desire to westernize, a lack of understanding of societal contradictions characterizing the post-Soviet transition, and deafness to the concerns of working people who opposed reforms. In our eyes, the latter were “retrograde”: they did not understand what civilization was about. We saw [our]selves as a revolutionary vanguard and chosen progressive reformers. It is we—media workers—who created a favorable environment for Ukraine’s neoliberalization, presented as westernization and civilization, with all disastrous consequences for society they brought. Only years after, I realized this.

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/28/zelensky-celebrity-populist-pinochet-neoliberal/

US, 60 Partner Nations Agree to Global Internet in Face of Chinese Authoritarianism

The United States and 60 partner nations signed a new declaration on April 28, affirming their commitment to develop and promote a single global internet in the face of growing authoritarianism from China and Russia.

The Declaration for the Future of the Internet was designed to champion “a single interconnected communications system for all of humanity” amid surging “state-sponsored or condoned malicious behavior.”

“This Declaration represents a political commitment among Declaration partners to advance a positive vision for the Internet and digital technologies,” the document reads. “It reclaims the promise of the Internet in the face of the global opportunities and challenges presented by the 21st century. It also reaffirms and recommits its partners to a single global Internet—one that is truly open and fosters competition, privacy, and respect for human rights.”

The push toward a single global internet comes mere weeks after former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said the world was being broken up into different “technospheres,” with authoritarian nations such as China and Russia developing their own technologies and standards that were both technically and ideologically incompatible with those of democratic nations.

Those comments were accompanied by a report that found that the Chinese communist regime was actively “seeking to co-opt nonaligned nations around the globe to align with its technosphere” and to develop for itself authoritarian dependencies throughout the world.

To combat this, the new declaration aims to protect human rights, promote a single global internet, promote trust and inclusivity, and protect a multistakeholder approach to internet development.

“Over the last year, the United States has worked with partners from all over the world – including civil society, industry, academia, and other stakeholders to reaffirm the vision of an open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure Internet and reverse negative trends in this regard,” the document reads.

That vision wouldn’t be without competition, it states, and the mission of maintaining open access to the freedom of information afforded by the internet would be a struggle.

“Over the last two decades, however, we have witnessed serious challenges to this vision emerge,” the document reads. “Access to the open Internet is limited by some authoritarian governments and online platforms and digital tools are increasingly used to repress freedom of expression and deny other human rights and fundamental freedoms.

“We are united by a belief in the potential of digital technologies to promote connectivity, democracy, peace, the rule of law, sustainable development, and the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

https://www.ntd.com/us-60-partner-nations-agree-to-global-internet-in-face-of-chinese-authoritarianism_772573.html

Carbon Capture’s Epic Fail: giant Gorgon gas plant goes ‘phut’

Australia’s largest Carbon Capture and Storage project has failed on all fronts.Is CCS simply a fraud, a sneaky way for the Coalition to subsidise its large fossil fuel donors with public money?

A report by the International Energy Economics and Finance Agency reveals that the Gorgon LNG project on Barrow Island off Western Australia’s Pilbara coast, one of the largest gas projects in the world, carbon capture and storage project has been a failure.

The project’s owners – Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and three smaller Japanese gas producers – planned to use carbon capture and storage ostensibly to offset the emissions the project produces. Chevron has donated $1.1 million over the past 10 years to political parties and campaigners according to AEC donor returns.

The Gorgon CCS project was initially planned to capture and inject underground up to 4 million tonnes (MT) of reservoir CO2 each year from the extraction and production of reservoir gas. Instead, the project sequestered on average less than 1MT per year.

So what is it about CCS that doesn’t work?

CCS as a technology has been around for over 50 years, though most of that time it went by a different name: advanced oil recovery or EOR.

EOR is a method that American oil producers developed to pump captured CO2 back into depleted wells to get as much oil out as possible. According to the Global CCS Institute, about 73% of carbon capture globally is currently used for EOR projects, making any initial “carbon capture” negligible.

“Gorgon CCS failed to reach its pre-defined targets,” says report author LNG/gas analyst Bruce Robertson. “CCS technology has been operating for 50 years. If Chevron and its partners can’t get it to work these past five years at Gorgon, it’s not an effective technology for reducing carbon emissions.”

Moreover, attempting to use CCS to reduce the emissions from gas is very shortsighted. As noted by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, the majority of emissions from gas occur when the gas is burnt, not when it is produced.

These emissions, called Scope 3 emissions, are where the problem lies and where Australia has a significant impact on the warming climate.

According to the Climate Council’s Senior Researcher, Tim Baxter “over the past decade, CCS has remained extremely expensive. There are still no projects operating anywhere in the world that have delivered CCS on time, on budget, or in the quantities promised. CCS is simply an attempt to prolong the life of polluting fossil fuels”.

https://michaelwest.com.au/carbon-capture-and-storage-epic-fail-at-gorgon-gas-plant/

>>16172464

17:29:28

17 = Q 2928

IMF chief tests positive for Covid-19

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has tested positive for Covid-19, a spokesman said Thursday, stressing she had only “mild symptoms.”

“IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has tested positive for Covid-19. She is experiencing mild symptoms and is working remotely while isolating at home,” the Washington-based crisis lender’s spokesman Gerry Rice said in a statement.

“She is fully vaccinated and boosted,” he added.

Georgieva joins the ranks of Washington elites who have tested positive lately amid a new rise in daily coronavirus infections.

This group includes multiple members of Congress and Vice President Kamala Harris, who tested positive on Tuesday.

At the time, she said she was not considered to have been in close contact with President Joe Biden.

https://insiderpaper.com/imf-chief-tests-positive-for-covid-19/

7 Times Joe Biden Deflected, Denied Involvement in Corrupt Family Business

President Joe Biden or his communications team have denied outright, and deflected questions about, involvement in Hunter’s corrupt family business at least seven times.

Despite the deflections and claims that Biden has had no role in the family business, 12 instances indicate Joe and his team have lied. Most recently, reported White House visitor logs show Joe Biden met with Hunter’s business partner in 2010. Twenty-six additional records show Hunter’s business partner visited the White House to meet with Joe Biden’s staff.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki dismissed the “visits” as “from more than ten years ago,” but did not deny that Hunter’s business partner actually met with Joe Biden. “I really don’t have more detail or information on them,” she said.

Below are seven times Joe Biden or his team have denied or deflected Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter’s family business:

1: September 19, 2019

“I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings. Here’s what I know — I know Trump deserves to be investigated,” he said. “You should be looking at Trump. Trump’s doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum.”

2: October 22, 2020

“I have not taken a penny from any foreign source, ever, in my life,” Biden said, referring to Hunter Biden’s role on the board of the Ukrainian energy company during a presidential debate. “Nothing was unethical.”

“My son has no made money from China. The only guy who has made money from China was this guy,” he said about Donald Trump.

3: October 19, 2020

“It’s a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about. What is he running on? What is he running on?” Joe Biden deflected during an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

4: October 25, 2020

“Joe Biden has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever,” Biden’s campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said. “He has never held stock in any such business arrangements nor has any family member or any other person ever held stock for him.”

5: March 31, 2022

“We absolutely stand by the president’s comment.” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield reaffirmed Hunter Biden did “nothing [that] was unethical” and never “made money” in China.

6: April 5, 2022

“The President has said that he never spoke to his son about his overseas business dealings. Is that still the case?” Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Psaki.

“Yes,” Psaki said.

7: April 6, 2022

When asked by Doocy about “evidence that the president, at one point, was office mates with Hunter and his brother Jim here in D.C.,” Psaki claimed reports were “not accurate.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/28/7-times-joe-biden-deflected-denied-involvement-corrupt-family-business/

Amazon Crashes After Reporting Catastrophic Guidance, Worst Revenue Growth In Decade

With the bulk of the FAAMG stocks - which is now GAMMA following Facebook's rebranding to Meta - having reported Q1 results (some great, like Facebook and MSFT, some terrible, like Facebook), investors were keenly looking to Amazon and Apple earnings after the close today, to round out the picture for the market generals and set the tone until next week's FOMC meeting, and also to find whether today's massive nasdaq short squeeze surge of 3% was justified.

Focuing on Amazon, Investors want to see if growth from Amazon’s profitable cloud-computing and advertising businesses outshine slower growth from its e-commerce business, which is lapping the blockbuster gains it had during the pandemic. Investors are already expecting sales growth of about 7% in the first quarter to be Amazon’s slowest in 20 years. They mainly want to see if Amazon is managing higher labor and fuel costs in a manner that protects profits. The company hiked yearly Prime membership subscriptions by $20 and announced a new fuel and inflation surcharge on sellers to help shore up revenue.

Amazon impressed investors in January with a Prime price hike and a big earnings boost tied to its investment in electric vehicle maker Rivian Automotive. Unless it has some more surprises, investors will have to focus more on Amazon’s fundamentals.

And unfortunately, it is not looking good because moments ago Amazon report both historical data and projections which badly missed expectations.

Amazon 1Q Oper Income $3.7B, missing est. $5.42B

Amazon Sees 2Q Net Sales $116.0B to $121.0B, missing Est. $125.01B

Here are the Q1 details:

Net Sales $116.44B,+7.3% Y/Y, barely beating Est. $116.43B

Loss per share $7.56, beating the estimate EPS $8.40

Physical Stores Net Sales $4.59B, +17% Y/Y, beating Est. $4.3B

Online Stores Net Sales $51.13B, -3.3% Y/Y, missing Est. $51.5B

North America Net Sales $69.24B, +7.6% Y/Y, beating Est. $67.8B

International net sales $28.76 billion, -6.2% y/y, missing Est $29.78 billion

AWS Net Sales $18.44B, +37% Y/Y, beating Est. $18.25B

Subscription Services Net Sales $8.41B, +11% Y/Y, missing Est. $8.55B

Operating income $3.67 billion, -59% y/y, missing the estimate $5.42 billion

Oper Margin 3.2% vs 8.2% Y/Y, missing Est. 4.7%

Fulfillment expense $20.27 billion, +23% y/y, estimate $19.3 billion

Seller unit mix 55% vs. 55% y/y, estimate 56.1%

Addressing some of the topline weakness, Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Poonam Goyal said “The margin being weak in the online business – you could say that’s surprising but it’s really not. For the online business the supply chain problem isn’t going away any time soon.”

While operating margins rebounded modestly, from 2.5% in Q4, to 3.2%, it was well below the 4.7% expected.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/amazon-crashes-after-reporting-catastrophic-guidance-worst-revenue-growth-decade

H.R.2884 - COVFEFE Act of 2017

This Act may be cited as the “Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically For Engagement Act of 2017” or the “COVFEFE Act of 2017”.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2884/text

>>16172699

SEC. 2. Requirement for preservation of social media accounts.

>>16172847

comms from Trump

Communications

Over

Various

Feeds

Electronically

For

Engagement

Biden Regime Moves to Ban Menthol Cigarettes

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/biden-regime-moves-ban-menthol-cigarettes/