Hello and welcome to Colonial Outcasts, the Anti-imperialist podcast that has way too much crap to talk about and not enough time to do it. It is February 18th and we are seeing titanic policy shifts in Europe, and West Asia - East Asia as well, but we won’t have too much time for that as the Trump Administration takes a more aggressive diplomatic stance towards Taiwan Independence as the Island Nation, territory, whatever you consider it to be, explores $10bn US arms deal to secure Trump’s support. Trump being obsessed with countries paying their own defense budgets to his satisfaction. Anyways, today will be Lebanon, some developments in Syria, Palestine as Always, A brief post mortem on the Munich Security council that signals a landmark shift in European security architeure and a breaking of the trans Atlantic world, and the current peace talks in Riyadh between the US and Russia regarding the termination of the War in Ukraine. It’s a lot - and we a joined for our weekly geo-political round-up by Regular contributor Elina Xenophontos, no longer coming to us from Cyprus, instead the more inhospitable realm of Albion, specifically London.