🇺🇸🇨🇳 Many say, "The US military ultimately backs the USD and USTs", and that is true...but per below, Chinese components back the US military...and Chinese factories make those Chinese components...and the US is tariffing those Chinese factories...

Do you see the problem yet?

🔗 Luke Gromen

🇺🇸🇸🇻 After U.S. President Trump suggested yesterday that he would support such a move, the White House confirmed today that they are “looking at” the legal basis for being able to deport not just illegal immigrants, but also Americans charged with certain crimes, to the notorious CECOT maximum-security mega-prison as well as other prisons in El Salvador.

🔗 OSINTdefender

📈 Gold fund net inflows have hit a record $80 BILLION year-to-date.

This is 2 TIMES more than the previous high set in the full year 2020.

Investors are pouring money into gold at a record pace as the market uncertainty has skyrocketed.

As a result, gold prices have rallied 22% year-to-date and have outperformed every other major asset class.

Gold prices have also hit 52 all-time highs over the last year, posting the best streak in 12 years.

Gold is the global safe haven.

🔗 The Kobeissi Letter

🇮🇱 There is a hyper-aggressive Israeli military doctrine reshaping the Middle East: Israel has been seizing territory from its neighbours, building buffer zones and bombing perceived threats as far as Beirut and Damascus in massive displays of force

https://x.com/FT/status/1912219424083370478

https://archive.ph/Jk5DY

🇺🇸 Hiring neocons is always bad.

The Trump Administration has shifted from DOGE & cutting -- to neocon spending & war hysteria.

🔗 Ron Paul

🇷🇺🇮🇩 Russia Eyes Papua Airbase Near Australia

Russia plans to establish its first airbase in the Pacific Ocean and wants to place its military aircraft near key U.S. and Australian facilities

The airbase will be located in the province of Papua, Indonesia.

🇦🇺 Australia sounds the alarm: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated that Canberra is awaiting clarification from Indonesia.

🔗 NEXTA

🇺🇸🇲🇽 CIA To Unleash 'Finely Tuned Machine' To Destroy Mexican Cartels

It was only a matter of time until the CIA became involved in the Trump administration's war on Mexican drug cartels. According, and is formulating a 'finely tuned machine' to help disrupt one of the deadliest criminal networks in the world.

Specifically, the CIA is establishing the Americas Counternarcotics Mission Center, combining its counternarcotics and Western Hemisphere teams to enable faster, more effective collaboration, CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis (formerly Rumble general counsel) told Breitbart, adding that the mission is to become a "finely tuned machine" to dismantle cartels, labeled foreign terrorists by the Trump administration.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/cia-unleash-finely-tuned-machine-destroy-mexican-cartels

🇺🇸🇾🇪 Jennifer Griffin has reported that B-2 bombers operating from Diego Garcia have been employing GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) against underground Houthi infrastructure targets since early April. The MOP is a highly specialized and limited stockpile weapon, designed specifically to neutralize deeply buried and fortified targets.

If confirmed, this would mark the first known combat use of the GBU-57 and would send a clear and deliberate message to Iran.

🔗 GMI

🇺🇸🇨🇳🇮🇷🛢 US imposes sanctions on a Chinese refinery accused of buying Iranian oil

The Treasury Department imposed sanctions Wednesday on a Chinese refinery accused of purchasing more than $1 billion worth of Iranian oil, saying the proceeds help finance both Tehran’s government and Iran’s support for militant groups.

The sanctioned refinery in China’s Shandong province received dozens of shipments of crude oil from Iran worth more than $1 billion, the Trump administration said. Some of the petroleum came from a front company for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, U.S. authorities said.

Officials also announced that several companies and vessels involved in the shipments were added to the sanctions list.

The new penalties were imposed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control and follow earlier efforts by the administration to disrupt the flow of Iranian oil, which authorities say is carried by Iran’s “shadow fleet.” The United States has already penalized dozens of individuals and vessels involved in the shipments.

“Any refinery, company, or broker that chooses to purchase Iranian oil or facilitate Iran’s oil trade places itself at serious risk,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-sanctions-shadow-fleet-oil-china-trump-d0f677185a09fc1f3392de209670b3d5

🇺🇸🇨🇳 White House says 245% Chinese tariff is false

China faces:

— 125% reciprocal tariff
— 20% tariff to address fentanyl crisis
— Section 301 tariffs on specific goods, between 7.5% and 100%

🔗 unusual_whales

🇪🇺🇩🇪 Looks like the era of EU-immigration has ended for Germany. Last year was the first year with a net loss of EU-foreigners, mostly Poles, Bulgarians and Croats. Eastern EU countries have now converged enough for migration flows to reverse.

🔗 BirthGauge

🇺🇸🇨🇳 U.S. officials are planning to use negotiations with 70+ nations to ask them to disallow China to ship goods through their countries, per WSJ.

The U.S. is reportedly attempting to "isolate" China.

🔗 The Kobeissi Letter

🇪🇺🇷🇺🛢 EU shelves idea of sanctions on Russian LNG imports

European officials have dropped the idea of pushing for a ban on the bloc's Russian liquefied natural gas imports in upcoming packages because of resistance from some governments and uncertainty about alternative sources, EU officials said.

Instead, the Commission wants to iron out a new road map to end the bloc's reliance on Russian energy by 2027. The plan is due to be announced in early May but details are scarce.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/eu-shelves-idea-sanctions-russian-lng-imports-2025-04-16/

https://archive.ph/zN0r3

🇺🇸 President Trump is set to cut foreign aid by 75%, slash the State Department’s budget by 50%, and strip funding from the UN, NATO, and over 20 international bodies.

Notably, aid to top recipients Israel and Egypt remains untouched.

🔗 AF Post

🇨🇳 Exclusive—How China's Military is Quietly Gaining Control of the Pacific

China has quietly extended its military reach far across the Pacific by building dozens of ports, airports, and communications projects at key points in a vast region that could shut out the United States and its allies in the event of war, a new report says.

The projects appeared civilian in nature but were in reality "strategic nodes" stretching about 3,000 miles, from Papua New Guinea immediately north of U.S. ally Australia, to Samoa, which lies about 40 miles away from the U.S. territory of American Samoa in Polynesia, according to the new study made available exclusively to Newsweek. The remote, scattered islands of the Pacific were once crucial to American warfighting strategy in World War II, and they could play a role in the next global conflict, too.

The growing logistics network in the South Pacific—built mostly by Chinese state-owned companies with ties to its defense sector—was being overlooked even as Beijing's rivalry with the U.S. deepened and as China's overseas base ambitions elsewhere drew attention, said Domingo I-Kwei Yang, an assistant research fellow at Taiwan's Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), an institution funded by the government of self-ruled Taiwan, which China has threatened to invade.

"The question is not whether, but when, China will complete a civil-military logistics system in the Pacific," Yang said in China's Dual-Use Infrastructure in the Pacific, a study published on Monday as part of the Coastwatchers 2.0 Project, a collaboration between the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and Project Sinopsis, a research center in Prague in the Czech Republic.

https://www.newsweek.com/china-south-pacific-strategic-dual-use-infrastructure-us-military-2059048

🇨🇳🌏 The China-ASEAN Free Trade Area was established in 2010. Since then, bilateral trade has surged, tripling from 2010 to 2024.

🔗 Valiant Panda

🇺🇸🇮🇷 Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, JD Vance and Susie Wiles helped shut down Israel/USA joint attack on Iran -- NY Times

This probably explains why three of Hegseth's aides have now been fired for supposed "leaks"--internal knife fighting is intensifying.

🔗 Douglas Mackey