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🇬🇧 According to all scientific authorities in botany, a tomato is, without a shadow of a doubt, a fruit. However, in 1893, the United States Supreme Court handed down the decision Nix v. Heden, according to which a tomato, in the context of a tariff law, is not a fruit, but a vegetable. This is a curious choice of words, because the Supreme Court did not decide that the tomato, although a fruit, should be considered a vegetable in a given context; instead, it decided that the tomato is a fruit in law, because the law is made according to ordinary language, which is different from botany. It is very strange, this idea that the Supreme Court legislates on reality, but that is how it works in the most powerful country in the world, an heir to the English Common Law.
💬 Read more by Bruna Frascolla
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🇮🇳🇵🇰 Lesser Hybrid Wars though – even carrying the horrifying prospect of turning nuclear – are allowed to come and go. Especially if they are part of the current war on BRICS, a sub-section of the war of factions of the West against the Global Majority.
So let’s go to Kashmir – to the sound of Jimmy Page’s hypnotic riff. Both India and Pakistan are escalating the war of decibels. Turkey is offering weapons – to Pakistan. Iran offered a mediator role: no takers.
💬 Read more by Pepe Escobar
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💥 Tariffs as "Payback"? The U.S. Risks Alienating Even Its Allies 💥
The U.S. keeps raising tariffs on Chinese goods, framing it as retaliation for "economic exploitation." But this trade war could backfire—not just against China, but by straining America’s ties with its own allies.
🔹 A Costly Revenge Game: Tariffs may feel like payback, but they hurt U.S. businesses and consumers the most—higher prices, disrupted supply chains, and slower innovation.
🔹 Pushing Allies Away: Many countries still loyal to the U.S. rely on trade with China. Forcing them to pick sides fuels resentment and weakens global trust in American leadership.
🔹 China Adapts, U.S. Stumbles: While Washington fights yesterday’s battles, Beijing deepens ties with Asia, Africa, and Latin America—leaving the U.S. increasingly isolated.
Instead of fueling division, smart diplomacy and fair competition could secure real long-term strength. But will Washington listen? 🗣
What’s worse—China’s trade practices or a U.S. strategy that hurts its own partners? 🍿
#TradeWar #USChina #Geopolitics #Economy
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❌ A number of topics remain taboo in discussing the war in Ukraine. Busification, Zelensky’s democratic mandate, Ukraine’s casualty numbers and anything suggesting that Ukraine cannot win are all off limits. Likewise the problem of alleged neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
The western governments are turning a blind eye once more to activity that they would never tolerate in their own countries.
☁️ Read more by Ian Proud
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🇺🇦 It would appear that the Ukrainian president has slammed the door firmly shut on the peace talks currently ongoing between himself, Russia and the U.S. In recent days, leaking his narrative to the Financial Times and publicly stating on TV that Crimea can never be accepted as Russian territory is revealing. It demonstrates two points quite openly for those who are exhausted with the charade of these so-called negotiations. One, that Zelensky is the joker in the pack who is entertaining everyone, not least of all western media, with his tricks, games and dance routines in that he is simply not in a position to negotiate anything – largely that he fears for his life in Kiev if he concedes regions like Crimea to Russia; and two, that the talks are merely a way of wasting time in the hope that they might create a window where both sides might pause the fighting so that Ukraine can regroup its military and restock its arsenal.
It is Zelensky who plays the role of the fake negotiator, who is unable to negotiate anything.
☁️ Martin Jay writes
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💢 The war in Ukraine has prompted Eurocrats in Brussels to force a binary choice on Serbia – ‘you’re either with us or with Russia’.
☁️ Ian Proud writes
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The distinction between the consumer and the producer of information vanishes once their activity becomes data. To be online is to both consume and produce data, that is value. Users generate data through interactions which platforms monetize. This unpaid ‘labour’ is comparable to Marx’s labour power, as users produce value (data).▪️AI algorithms, cloud infrastructure, and digital platforms are the new means of production, and they are concentrated in very few hands.
Data extraction and collection is driven by the dictates of capital accumulation, which in turn drives capital to construct and rely upon a universe where everything is reduced to data. Since the data which is fed into machines has undergone a preliminary abstraction process, there is nothing to stop this data from being outcomes of previous cycles of artificial production of information through data. Data generate data that generate data and so on. Like interest-bearing capital, 'a mysterious and self-creating source of its own increase … self-valorising value, money-breeding money’, as Marx describes the process of financialization that autonomizes capital from its own support.
▪️Data accumulation and capital accumulation have led to the same outcome: growing inequality and the consolidation of monopoly corporate power.
But as the autonomization of capital that crowds out non-financial investments has a detrimental effect on productive sectors, so does the proliferation of AI content online. Several researchers have pointed out that generating data out of synthetic data leads to dangerous distortions. Training large language models on their own output doesn’t work and may lead to ‘model collapse’, a degenerative process whereby, over time, models forget the true underlying data distribution, start hallucinating and producing nonsense.3
Without a constant input of good quality data produced by humans, these language models cannot improve. ▪️The question is, who is going to feed well-written, factually correct, AI-free texts when an increasing number of people are offloading cognitive effort to artificial intelligence, and there is mounting evidence that human intelligence is declining?
💭 French demographer Emmanuel Todd became famous for having predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union already in the 1970s. The key to his prediction was demographics: lower birth rates and higher infant mortality were signs of collapse. Last year, he returned to the literary spotlight with a book in which, using the same criteria, he predicted the collapse of the United States and the rise of Russia. This month, on April 8, he was in Budapest to participate in an event called “József Eötvös Lectures”. On this occasion, he returned to his usual topic and addressed issues that followed the publication of his book, such as the election of Trump and Europe’s reaction to the refusal to support Ukraine ad infinitum. The content of the lecture was reported by the Hungarian website “Boys of Pest” (or Pesti Srácok), and the editor kindly sent to me a translation of it. In fact, it seems that, outside the Hungarian media, the demographer’s lecture went unnoticed. Pro-Soros left-wing activists blocked a bridge and managed to prevent Minister Gergely Gulyás from attending.
Emmanuel Todd pointed out the usual data, of which it is worth highlighting: that infant mortality is lower in Russia than in the U.S.; that Russia has solid family structures, while in the U.S. this is being lost; that industry, the quality of education and advances in engineering are in decline in the U.S.
Another of Emmanuel Todd’s usual topics is nihilism, which, according to him, has taken over the United States since the country stopped being guided by puritanism. According to him, the nihilism of the United States, which emerged after the decline of Protestantism, led the country to so many wars. Another consequence is gender ideology, which, according to Todd, aims to destroy reality and realism.
For Todd, Trump’s election follows a revolutionary pattern common among people who lose wars. Trump’s election is a desperate response to this decadence perceived by the people themselves.
The United States will be the first Western power to collapse, due to the extent of its economic and nihilistic crisis.
☁️ Read more by Bruna Frascolla
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🇷🇺 Kursk region is fully liberated
'I congratulate all personnel of all military units that took part in the defeat of neo-Nazi formations that invaded Kursk'
'The defeat of the neo-Nazi regime is approaching'
♨️ Stupid and all as this report is, its main recommendations and approaches will work its way into law both at the national Irish level and at the European Union level as well.
☁️ Declan Hayes writes
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🕯️ It is with great sadness and loss that the world says farewell to Pope Francis this weekend as his mortal remains are laid to rest in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
The head of the Catholic Church died on Easter Monday at the age of 88, following bouts of illness from lung infection and other infirmities. He had been unwell for several years.
Tributes from around the world have extolled his many attributes as a peacemaker and advocate for the poor majority.
Yes, he made several missteps during his leadership as the Vicar of Rome. On one occasion, he held up a flag presented to him which unbeknownst was associated with Ukrainian NeoNazis.
But overall, the man showed tremendous dedication to the cause of peace and justice. He courageously condemned the Israeli violence in Gaza, implying war crimes were being committed.
He also pleaded for peace in Ukraine at the beginning of that conflict in 2022, urging dialogue and diplomacy. That was when Western leaders were demanding a fight to the last Ukrainian, supplying more weapons, and generally fueling a futile slaughter.
For most of the three-year conflict in Ukraine, Western leaders repudiated peace diplomacy with Russia, insisting on arming the Kiev regime to the teeth and prolonging the bloodshed.
Pope Francis stood firmly for peace, diplomacy, and respect. Such a pity that the Western politicians with solemn faces and dabbing their tears at his funeral have so little respect for the holy man and what he preached.
☁️ Read more in this week’s Editorial
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🧭 The West’s hostile rhetoric against Russia has taken on increasingly aggressive tones, revealing a coordinated effort to isolate Moscow across all spheres — including the maritime domain. Russian presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev recently stated that the European Union and the United Kingdom are currently preparing a naval blockade against Russia, a measure that constitutes a clear violation of international law and signals an unprecedented escalation in geopolitical tensions.
More than a symbolic or diplomatic gesture, such a naval siege amounts to a declaration of economic and strategic warfare. Patrushev warned that Russia has more than enough means to respond to any provocation of this kind. He made it clear that, in the event of diplomatic failure, the Russian Navy would be authorized to take whatever measures are necessary to protect the country’s shipping.
Faced with the threat of a Western maritime blockade, Moscow could use its military infrastructure in the Arctic and the deterrent power of its nuclear arsenal to ensure sovereignty and respond to any escalation.
💬 Lucas Leiroz writes @lucasleiroz
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♨️ NATO knows that, once they incessantly beat their war drums and get their entire orchestra strumming along, their propaganda will easily carry the day in The War of the Words.
💬 Read more by Declan Hayes
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Crimea is Russia 🇷🇺
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My latest article on Strategic Culture:
Where have Europe’s pacifists gone – the ones who once opposed NATO?
Europe is birthing the very totalitarianism it accuses Russia, China, or America of.
Where are they now—Europe’s pacifists? Why do they no longer gather in Belgium, in Brussels, NATO’s headquarters, where large demonstrations against the alliance once took place? These protests, led by pacifists, denounced NATO, war, militarization, and nuclear arms.
The Belgian newspaper Le Soir recently posed an intriguing question: Why have the pacifists vanished? “The arms race has begun,” the article argues. “Like its European neighbors, Belgium is preparing to significantly increase military spending this year—without facing any opposition.”
Germany once had a robust pacifist movement. In the 1970s and 80s, activists—many from what is now the Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen)—protested NATO and nuclear weapons. Today, those same Greens, led by Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, champion war and arms shipments.
Their party program declares Germany must lead Europe, offering a “global counterweight” to China and Russia. The anti-war, anti-NATO movement has been absorbed into a party now pushing for war—especially against Russia, as Baerbock’s rhetoric makes clear.
Read more: https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/04/22/where-have-europe-pacifists-gone-ones-who-once-opposed-nato/
⛪️🌐 Since Pope Francis’ more serious illness between 2024 and 2025, the Catholic world had already become aware that the Pontiff might, perhaps, be approaching his final days. Thus, speculation about the future of the Church had begun months earlier. As a result, while his passing caused consternation and sadness among Catholics—and even non-Catholics—around the world, Pope Francis’ death did not come as a surprise to anyone.
Now, Francis’ pontificate was extremely polarizing and controversial, both among conservatives and progressives. This was largely due to the ambiguities in his statements and documents, which at times seemed to lean toward reformist positions and at others toward defending conservative stances. The mass media played a central role in amplifying these confusions.
💬 Read more by Raphael Machado
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💢 The Ukrainian President's Office has completely shifted its position on the resource deal. As a result, the document no longer contradicts the secret agreement with Britain, effectively rendering it meaningless for Ukraine.
The natural resources deal between the United States and Ukraine has officially been signed. Ukrainian authorities believe the agreement strengthens Kyiv's position in negotiations with Russia.
The signing has been confirmed by both the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy. Under the agreement, the U.S. receives priority access to all investment projects related to mineral extraction and related infrastructure in Ukraine.
“The American presence will prevent many bad actors from entering the country or, more importantly, from accessing the areas where we are conducting excavations,” said U.S. President Donald Trump shortly before the agreement was signed.
"This agreement sends a clear signal to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to the peace process—centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine in the long term. And, to be clear, no state or individual who financed or supplied the Russian military machine will be allowed to benefit from Ukraine’s reconstruction,” said U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Development, Yulia Svyrydenko, elaborated on the deal's terms:
Ukraine retains ownership and control of its subsoil resources. Only the Ukrainian government can decide what to extract.
An equal investment fund will be established by Ukraine and the United States, with neither side holding preferential voting rights. Fund management will be conducted jointly.
The fund will be financed only through revenues from new licenses. It will receive 50% of licenses for oil and gas production projects.
The agreement will only lead to targeted amendments to Ukraine’s budget code.
National ownership structures and privatization processes remain unchanged. State-owned enterprises, such as Ukrnafta, will remain under Ukrainian ownership.
Ukraine has no debt obligations to the United States under this agreement.
Earlier, President Trump had demanded that Ukraine repay previous U.S. arms shipments with natural resources, but President Zelensky successfully negotiated the removal of that clause. According to the Financial Times, the U.S. softened its position after Ukraine hired American legal counsel.
The U.S. has also committed to supporting additional investment and technological collaboration. Income and contributions to the fund will be exempt from taxation in both the United States and Ukraine.
Bloomberg reports that the agreement is seen as critical for securing President Trump’s alignment with Ukraine in negotiations to end the war with Russia. Furthermore, U.S. military aid going forward will count as a contribution to the joint fund. The agreement also clarifies that it will not hinder Ukraine’s path to joining the European Union.
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🇺🇦 Los líderes europeos no vendrán a Kiev el 9 de mayo, - Politico
@SCF_Spanish
💢 Although Russia recently offered an Easter truce, not only did Ukraine continually break it but CNN and the Guardian both mocked it.
☁️ Declan Hayes writes
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🇪🇺 In recent months, we have all heard the pressure from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to accelerate the creation of a Savings and investment union (SIU). Initially presented as a tool to mobilize financial resources for the benefit of European citizens and to promote the green and digital transition, the most concerning aspect of this campaign lies, once again, in the uncritical, passive, and submissive acceptance of the Commission’s intentions and decisions.
Under closer scrutiny, this is yet another agenda. How many agendas has von der Leyen presented to us, only for things to keep getting worse? That agenda was designed to benefit the usual suspects: the most prominent private and corporate interests (elsewhere referred to as “oligarchs”), at the expense, as always, of collective interests, public welfare, and the national interests of many member states.
The Savings and investment union announced by Ursula von der Leyen is a fundamental political choice about the future of Europe and its peoples.
☁️ Read more by Hugo Dionísio
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Escobar: China, Hong Kong, & The Art Of Blinking | ZeroHedge
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-china-hong-kong-art-blinking
🌏 Captain Chaos definitely does not have the cards – which as even South Pacific penguins know, are all made in China 🗣
☁️ Pepe Escobar writes @rocknrollgeopolitics
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🗣 Trump clearly is in the midst of an existential conflict. He has a landslide mandate. But is ringed by a resolute domestic enemy front in the form of an ‘industrial concern’ infused with Deep State ideology, centred primarily on preserving U.S. global power (rather than on mending of the economy).
The key MAGA issue however is not foreign policy, but how to structurally re-balance an economic paradigm in danger of an extinction event.
☁️ Alastair Crooke writes
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💢 The brief talk Trump and Zelensky had just before the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican.
'So no suit, not even to the Pope's funeral, eh? Well let me tell you something ...'
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https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/04/25/china-hong-kong-and-art-blinking/
The second of my China columns - from Shanghai and Hong Kong.
🇺🇦 Not even at Easter was it possible to have a little respite, because, ultimately, no one in the West really wants peace ❌
💬 Read more by Lorenzo Maria Pacini @ideeazione
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🇺🇸 Even if Trump 2 is ephemeral, it seems that this will not take the Western world back to the crazy Biden years.
☁️ Bruna Frascolla writes
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🇻🇦 The Vatican should stop speaking in tongues and call out the massacres in the Congo, Nigeria, Sudan and Syria for what they are.
☁️ Declan Hayes writes
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🇷🇺 The current war between Russia and NATO in Ukraine is far from being merely a regional conflict. Behind the military clashes and media propaganda lies a much deeper confrontation: a struggle between sovereignty and global domination, between a multipolar world and the imposition of a centralized governance serving the interests of the transnational financial elite. In this context, Russia emerges as the last major obstacle to the globalist agenda, which seeks to completely reshape the international order—eliminating any country that resists the project of forced unification under Western technocratic control.
Moscow continues to block the realization of globalist elite plans.
☁️ Read more by Lucas Leiroz @lucasleiroz
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