PETER MAN—Trump will redouble his trade war and low-intensity conflicts with China. He will ignore the Taiwan red line by meeting with Lai Ching-te to test China. He will give the DPP the green light to prosecute and imprison TPP (party leader Ko Wen-je already imprisoned) and KMT lawmakers in a reign of terror. Will China react angrily and issue more toothless protests? Or will they make the nation whole again swiftly and bloodlessly at the time of their choosing (hopefully before being forced to act)? Everything Trump does will hasten the fall of the empire, but he will be more concerned about consolidating his power in America. A hot war, especially a losing one, will scupper his plans. He will try to avoid it. Trump is not hard to understand. He is as predictable as gravity. His presidency will be a train wreck for America and its vassals. The rest of the world, who are not vassals, can humour him and let him bloviate about how great a deal-maker he is.
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EDITOR—The U.S. has enabled the slaughter and starvation in Gaza for more than thirteen months. Conservative estimates from medical workers that have served in Gaza put the overall death toll at nearly 119,000, and that number will have risen significantly in the weeks since then. We have seen the same pattern repeat for all that time: the Israeli government commits grievous crimes against the Palestinian civilian population, the administration tut-tuts and asks that Netanyahu and his allies be slightly less sadistic, the Israeli government blows through whatever lines the administration has drawn, and then the U.S. shrugs and takes their word for it that they are improving.
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EDITOR—Global activists and thinkers, dreamers and doers came together during IGNITE! to chart a path towards a society built on justice, equity, democracy, peace, and liberation. The Transnational Institute celebrated its 50th anniversary with a festival of radical ideas! We live in dark times — obscene levels of inequality, uncontrolled corporate greed, rampant militarization, a rising far-right, and ecological breakdown. Most disturbing of all, Western governments’ complicity with the ongoing genocide in Palestine has normalised brutal levels of dehumanisation with profound consequences for all vulnerable people worldwide. We need radical, systemic change.
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THE GRAYZONE—The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil and Wyatt Reed assess Trump’s initial round of Israel First foreign policy picks, and how top donors like Miriam Adelson dictated the selections through his transition team.
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BRIAN BERLETIC—Despite US voters hoping the incoming Trump administration will end America’s wars abroad, citing apparent interest in divesting in Ukraine as proof of change to come, President-elect Trump and his vice president pick JD Vance have vowed even while campaigning to shift US attention overseas from Ukraine to a much larger and more dangerous confrontation with China.
