Trump is preparing for war with China. The tariffs help with decoupling the economies and figure out potential allies (whose economies also need to be decoupled if they are to help in the war effort), trying to “reindustrialize” the country, instill militarism in society and in education, greatly increase the military budget, focusing on “rare earth minerals” and raw resources needed to fight a war. Seems like the empire is preparing for the salto mortale within the next decade.
From my very limited experience, beer in a plastic bottle is not uncommon in China, especially for the very cheap ones (at least when you order online, or from a supermarket).
But we will never stop hearing from western liberals about the betrayal of Ukraine by Trump and how Russia would have lost had it not been for Trump. 
It’s very much a leader-centered party. Their leader, Zoe Konstantopoulou, used to be a quite prominent member of Syriza (actually her father was for a time the leader of “Synaspismos” a left party from the 90ies whose members were mostly communists who split with KKE and later became Syriza) but she left the party after the 2015 capitulation. Around 2012-2015 she was known for pushing for reparations from Germany for the Nazi occupation, at the time what some people thought was a useful argument for forgiving the greek debt or turning around the discussion from “we owe money to Germany” to “they owe us too”. During the first Syriza government she was named as the speaker of the greek parliament. She is known for being a firebrand, always speaking in parliament over the allotted time, and getting into arguments very often. She is also a lawyer who has been involved in some interesting/public cases: In the past, she was representing a journalist who started a motion against Henry Kissinger for his involvement in the military dictatorship in greece as well as part of a motion in the ICC against British officials for crimes committed during the Iraq war. She defended the family of Alexis Grigoropoulos (the 15 year old boy who was shot by a police officer in cold blood in 2008 which led to some of the biggest riots in modern greek history). Her recent surge in popularity has to do with the fact that she is currently defending pro-bono the families of the youth that died in the Tempi train crash in 2023 (I wrote a post a few weeks back about the greek protests related to this), and has been the most vocal critic of the government for the handling of that case.
I think that her politics are incoherent, and I agree that the “we are not left or right” will have to face reality if she ever gets close to power. It’s unclear whether her popularity will keep going up or it will burst. Greek politics right now are too chaotic to tell.
Very recently read “Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present”. It’s an extremely interesting book, and one point the authors make is that capitalism has nowhere to go forward now. The only thing left is imperial violence turning inwards again, squeezing wages inside the core to increase the rates of profits.
I think it’s a reflection on the end of the era of liberal democracies. We have this happening in many countries, neoliberals are trying to hold onto power as right wing politicians are on the rise.
Advertising again since it’s starting soon (I guess that counts as news, right?): The Progressive International is organizing the people’s academy. The first lecture is on the 5th of April. The academy includes bimonthly online lectures and an extensive reading list, and will go on until the end of the year. It looks pretty interesting and it’s free. Feel free to register if you want to follow it (if people are curious here are the material for the introductory lecture).
Politics in Greece are unfortunately more or less dead. After Syriza’s capitulation in 2015, they were in government for one term, they lost the next election but they were a close second to the conservative party. The election after that we have a surge of extreme right wing parties (I think since the restoration of democracy in Greece it was the first time that the right wing parties all together get more than 50% of the vote) and the collapse of Syriza. After that Tsipras resigned from its head and then Syriza splits into 2 parties both of which collapsed in the polls even further. Right now, the polls show a very weak conservative party at ~25%, and then 5-6 parties around 6-10%, some of them being far-right, christian fundamentalist and the others center left and left. On a bright side, the communist party is making some gains, even though not sure how much faith to put in them.
2 years ago a horrible train crash happened (head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train). The result was the death of 57 people, many of them university students returning after a holiday to Thessaloniki where they were studying. The train company (used to be public but privatized during the economic crisis) had dismantled many of the security measures, so the accident has a political dimension and caused a shock in Greek society. Furthermore, there seems that the government tried to botch the investigations on the accident, there is a theory that one of the trains was carrying illegally some flammable substance which is used to adulterate gasoline that made the fire that was caused by the crash even worse, and this is why the government is trying to hide what happened. Last Friday was the 2 year anniversary of the accident, and a general strike was called that was joined by most sectors, and lead to the biggest demonstration in Greece at least in the last 40 years (some estimates puts the number of Greeks attending throughout Greece at more than 1 million people). I was quite surprised by this, and shows some fighting spirit back in the Greeks which had disappeared after the capitulation of Syriza. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is any political party leadership who can use this discontent and push for real left change in the country, but we will see.
I agree, I also don’t think they will be able to solidify a sphere of influence. Seems to me more of a fool’s errant, but it could lead to hot (and maybe nuclear) wars.
It means it’s not strong enough anymore and they need the hammer. This seems to be the direction Trump presidency. The american empire has been slowly losing its ability to exert control over other countries indirectly and now needs to do it directly. Most of the color revolutions of the last few years have failed, most of the attempts to covertly overthrow governments or push for the benefit of american capital have been unsuccessful. Even successful ones seem unable to push countries under the total influence of the USA (for example Peru is still going through with huge infrastructure projects funded by China). It seems Trump’s presidency will be about trying to solidify a definite sphere of influence in more direct terms and resurrect the american industrial base.
I was talking to my friend about music, mentioned an artist (that she didn’t know about) and showed her a song on my computer. 5 minutes later her video app on her phone was suggesting songs from that artist. It’s completely ubiquitous, I operate under the assumption that I am always listened to.
I don’t think the dems thought they could win the election. They just picked a bad candidate who would not hurt them as bad as Biden down-ballot. Biden had to take away the covid measures, withdraw from Afghanistan, and be involved in 2 major wars one of which is a genocidal war. They could not win this election, they just picked a candidate who they consider bad so they can burn her.
I think it would become more difficult for Hezbollah but at least to my ignorant mind the idea that they will be completely cut off from any access to weapons sounds too pessimistic. Some people here are already spelling the end of Hezbollah is a bit too premature.
Here Jeremy Scahill says he is no longer a member of Hamas: https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/1864000895752589504
Thank you! If you also have some article/source I would appreciate (but I can search also things myself, based on your information).
Do you have any sources on Sudan? I am interested to read more, especially related to US/western involvement but can’t find much information.
An update on the dutch education protests (mentioned here by @Beetle@hexbear.net ): In the end student unions and the youth wings of the socialist party and the communist party said they would go anyway to the protest. The police (that yesterday said they couldn’t guarantee the safety) said today that they will facilitate the protest so there was no ban. The labor unions still asked people not to go. In the end around 3-4k people gathered (mostly students and some university employees), which I think was very good given the circumstances. Some universities decided to host local protest on campuses (but as far as I can tell those were small). The university staff and unions are calling for another protest on the 25th of November.
Yes the budget cuts are massive, for context (for people not in the Netherlands) the cuts amounts to about the total budget of 1-1.5 big dutch universities (the country has in total 20 universities). The police of course waited for the last moment to not let any organizing party any leeway to plan something else. The unions are completely pathetic, immediately rolled over.
Comrade, as the others said, I have never been more certain that we will win. Be strong and be well! 
I think people should not underestimate the usefulness of people like Sachs. He is definitely not a comrade, but he is a voice coming from people who used to be very close to power that does express criticism of American empire and some positive attitude towards “multipolarity” and China. He is also very well connected, in the sense that he does have personal relations with people currently close to power or in power so he might have insights and inside knowledge that he is willing to “leak” to the public.
I take no position on his opinion on COVID, I have 0 expertise, and I think he also has very little expertise when it comes to this topic.