UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war | OHCHR
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-committee-finds-israels-warfare-methods-gaza-consistent-genocide

TLDR: right-wing billionaires funded the creation of a far-right media network. This is not possible for the left.

https://www.usermag.co/p/why-democrats-wont-build-their-own

For some professional observers—those tasked with making money rather than policy—there were signs of trouble all along. In June, analysts with the asset management firm Apollo published a mid-year outlook report ominously noscriptd An Unstable Economic Equilibrium. They acknowledged the “stamina,” “resilience,” and “underlying strength” of the American economy, which showed no signs of recession, despite doomsayers’ prognoses.

[...]

But under the frothy surface, trouble was stirring. “Credit card delinquencies for the youngest households have risen sharply,” notes the Apollo report, “and are approaching rates last seen during the Global Financial Crisis.” Likewise, “people in their 30s and below are falling behind on their auto loans at a faster pace than during the pandemic,” nearing rates “almost as bad as . . . at the peak in 2008.” Even when not crushed by debt, workers simply have less money.

[...]

For those focused on short-term macroeconomic indicators like growth and unemployment, that immiseration has been hard to see—and voters’ cries of misery beggared belief. How could so many people be drowning when GDP growth was so robust and unemployment so low? The Apollo report was clear-eyed. The post-pandemic recovery was “a story of two cohorts.” One group owes money and has been crushed by high interest rates; the other owns assets and has never been better off financially. For the latter, inflation was a nuisance at worst; it was hard to believe anything was fundamentally wrong. But as the Financial Times noted on the eve of the election, “the bottom 40 per cent by income now account for 20 per cent of all spending while the richest 20 per cent account for 40 per cent”—“the widest gap on record.” Elite consumption is so lopsided that it appears to be driving much of the economy, while the rest barely hang on.

[...] Ferguson and Storm found average real weekly earnings fell across all wage classes, with disproportionate declines in the median, the third quartile, and the ninth decile of earners. These, of course, are the very income bands in which Trump made inroads in 2024.

Given all this, a plausible case can be made that any incumbent would have lost to any challenger, almost regardless of strategy, messaging, or platform. As many commentators have noted, in the past year incumbent parties around the world—from Argentina to France to India—have suffered political defeats attributable to the pain of inflation. One notable exception to this trend, however, is Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and leftist Jewish woman who won over a deeply Catholic, oil-producing, and still profoundly patriarchal country hit by an even worse bout of inflation than the US. Her triumph shows that the substance of politics actually matters: the impressionistic abstractions of comparative social science should offer little comfort to American liberals. Incumbents aren’t interchangeable variables, but rather actors that create particular kinds of social politics as much as they are created by them.

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/as-good-as-it-gets/

"At first glance, it may appear that the newly elected Trump administration will accept and adjust to declining U.S. influence because of its focus on domestic change under an America First agenda. More likely, however, Trump and his team will pursue the illusion of U.S. influence while accelerating its decline."

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-multipolarity/

"To truly shift power, we need to focus on four critical areas. First, invest in sustained organizing that builds trust and relationships within black, Latino, and working-class communities. Second, create a strong, year-round financial and electoral infrastructure that bolsters groups like Justice Democrats, the Jewish Vote, WFP, and DSA, allowing them to compete with AIPAC’s financial muscle and support candidates well beyond election cycles. Third, develop a civic engagement model that targets likely primary voters around clear policy objectives, keeping them consistently engaged. Fourth, forge durable liberal-left coalitions with institutions like labor unions, progressives, faith organizations, and youth movements. Without this strategic shift, we’ll continue to fall short."

https://jacobin.com/2024/11/the-left-gaza-democrats-movement/

Since taking power, Starmer has pursued a policy agenda that’s barely distinguishable from that of his Tory predecessors. He’s scrapped almost every genuinely progressive idea the Labour Party had to offer, hastened the creeping privatization of the National Health Service, waged a campaign of financial austerity against poor and sick people, endorsed anti-trans bigotry, authorized inhumane “raids” against immigrants, pursued a variety of “tough-on-crime” crackdowns, and cozied up to right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch, all while purging principled leftists from the Labour bench and installing former Tories. Words are cheap, but actions reveal a politician’s true character. With every passing day, Starmer has proven that the Conservatives’ rule over Britain never really ended at all. Because in every way that matters, Keir Starmer is a Tory himself.

[...]

In the European edition of Politico, we can find a comprehensive list of all the Labour policies that Starmer once claimed to support, but later walked back or completely abandoned. Abolishing tuition fees at British universities? Gone. Nationalizing the “Big Six” energy companies? Gone. Offering universal childcare to all British children? Gone. Increasing taxes on the rich? Never heard of it. Abolishing the absurd, archaic institution of the House of Lords? Indefinitely on hold. Rent control? Not a chance. And so on, and so on. In place of these ambitious goals, Starmer started speaking fluent Conservative, saying that his priority was “growth, growth, growth” and citing self-imposed “fiscal rules” for why each new program couldn’t be afforded. At one point, he even cited Margaret Thatcher as a figure he admired, saying she had “dragg[ed] Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.”

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/keir-starmer-is-a-disgrace-to-the-british-labour-party

Implementing the EU's Critical Raw
Materials Act - EU parliament briefing

2024 IMF Annual Meetings: main
developments and outcomes

Key findings:
- inflation to return to target in 2025 in Europe
- The euro area growth projections were revised slightly down compared to April’s edition, to 0.8% in 2024 and 1.2% in 2025. Reasons for Europe’s underwhelming growth are the slow labour force growth resulting from acceleration of aging population, low investment rate relative to capital stock due to uncertainties about the effects of global fragmentation and trade policies, and low productivity growth.
- China is the main global creditor

I find it hilarious how the IMF plan is to deregulate, reduce barriers to trade and lower public debt on one side, while on the other increase social protections and reduce private debt. How the fuck are governments supposed to increase social protections while reducing public debt (that almost always is done by cutting social protections) while at the same time maintaining monetarist policies (forget MMT!)? Who knows