Mask-off outbursts by Maga insiders and most strikingly, the destruction and reconstruction of the presidential seat, with a huge new $300m ballroom, means Trump isn’t planning to leave the White House when his term ends, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
IN A 1920 poster by the Soviet artist Dmitrii Moor, a snake-like behemoth is prodded and repelled by a colourful army waving bayonets and red flags — the world’s colonised and oppressed.
The snake is coiled around a giant factory, representing not only the precious spoils of imperial plunder but also, as hawk-eyed students of Marx might recognise, the fetters that monopolisation imposes on development. “Death to imperialism!” the poster reads.
The image comes across as a curious relic today, if we take the snake to be those European leaders who, with notable snubs and omissions, met in London on Sunday to discuss Ukraine’s humiliation by Washington. Like a century ago, the snake is all grimace and panic. But where is the factory? And where, really, is the threat?
In a speech to the 12th Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, SEVIM DAGDELEN warns of a growing historical revisionism to whitewash Germany and Japan’s role in WWII as part of a return to a cold war strategy from the West — but multipolarity will win out
RON JACOBS salutes a magnificent narrative that demonstrates how the war replaced European colonialism with US imperialism and Soviet power
In the first half of a two-part article, PETER MERTENS looks at how Nato’s €800 billion ‘Readiness 2030’ plan serves Washington’s pivot to the Pacific, forcing Europeans to dismantle social security and slash pensions to fund it



