Maria Syed

@EPOG_EMJMD|Erasmus Mundus Scholar @Erasmus_Mundus|HWR Berlin|UNV Volunteer| Lahore School of Economics'19

[Latindadd in English @Latindadd_Eng]

🌎 The cost of capital, or the interest rate at which a country services its sovereign debt, is significantly determined by Credit Rating Agencies. When a country faces a crisis, credit rating agencies can make the difference between opening pathways to recovery or further restricting access to financing.

📉 The cases of Argentina, Ecuador, Belize and Colombia show how downgrades can turn political, external or fiscal shocks into greater pressure on debt, reserves and public spending.

⚠️ Rating agencies’ decisions are not neutral: numerous studies show how their methodology is biased. At the same time, this methodology shapes the policy space of countries in the Global South.

👉Read our report: https://t.co/vReiv43Je9

[Sam Husseini @samhusseini]

A smiling Guterres indicates that he will continue to refuse to use the term "genocide" to describe the Gaza genocide even after today's UN Commission report basically told him to do so.

He does indicate that he would do so if the UNSC *or* the UNGA do so in resolutions. Presumably his doing so will put more heat on the UN and its members to actually do things to stop Israel.

[The Third Pole @third_pole]

🌱💰 "The decarbonisation of key industries, including the military and arms sectors, must be placed firmly on the agenda."

✍️ @MarriaSyed explains why #COP29's New Collective Quantified Goal needs a human rights-based approach to loss and damage:
https://t.co/hxDckvJ0GU

[sarah @sahouraxo]

Israel is wiping out border village after border village in South Lebanon.

Centuries-old villages.

When ISIS did this in Syria and Iraq, the whole world went crazy.

But when Israel systematically does the exact same thing in Palestine and Lebanon, nobody bats an eyelash.

[Isabella M Weber @IsabellaMWeber]

Economists: Let’s assume everyone is a homo economicus, always rational, maximizing utility knowing their budget constraint and prices.

Majority in every poll: we are worse off due to inflation.

Economists: People don’t get it, it’s just vibes.

[Jayati Ghosh @Jayati1609]

What does it say about a judicial system when a young scholar is jailed without cause and without bail for 1500 days, because judges find excuses not to hear his case? #CitizensAgainstUAPA #umarkhalid1500daysinjail

[Rehna Raveendran @Rehna_AntiCaste]

A book that Caste Hindus will never suggest you to read, because it exposes the most brutal form of inequality their ancestors created and maintained for long in Kerala called caste slavery.

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

It also bears noting that the European settler colonies benefitted from a massive infusion of land and resources appropriated through the process of expanding their frontiers and dispossessing Indigenous people. In many cases (e.g., the USA) they also benefitted from surplus appropriated through mass enslavement. In the 19th century up to 1/3rd of the USA's workforce was enslaved.

They also created their own peripheries: for example, Australia uses weaker countries in Oceania as its own regional periphery, and the USA began using Latin America as a periphery beginning in the 19th century, later becoming the imperial power, developing currency hegemony, and today appropriating massive quantities of value from the rest of the global South through unequal exchange, facilitated by its military power, its patent regime, and its control over international financial institutions.

Btw, anyone who claims that the European settler colonies had more "liberal" or "inclusive" institutions needs to grapple with the fact that in reality these institutions were leveraged to justify dispossession, territorial expansion, enslavement and segregation. Inclusive for whom, exactly?

[Jayati Ghosh @Jayati1609]

I discuss the causes of increasing food insecurity especially in lower income countries, and how Brazil and South Africa in the G20 Presidencies could champion multilateral policies to change this.
https://t.co/wqCsNYbD1L

[Abubaker Abed @AbubakerAbedW]

This is a black time in the history of Western mainstream media being cooked everywhere.

Here's @s_m_marandi teaching @SkyNews and @ChelseaFC's fan Mark Austin a very tough lesson on "humanity"

I am loving this formidable transformation...

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

The Lebanese ministry of health reported that Israeli airstrikes targeted 14 ambulances and fire engines on September 23, deliberately killing emergency responders and medics who were trying to rescue people.

War crimes upon war crimes.

[Isabella M Weber @IsabellaMWeber]

AfD once more by far the strongest party among those who consider their economic situation as bad in Brandenburg vote.

Feels like Germany is running a nation-wide experiment to rigorously demonstrate that austerity really does fuel the extreme right.

[We Don't Have Time @WeDontHaveTime]

📢💪 How can grassroots #climate advocacy shape global climate governance?
Our partner Not Just Celsius shares an article by @MarriaSyed exploring the power of local activism & the role of #humanrights published in the latest edition of @icarus_complex
https://t.co/dtQAUbRjd6

[James Jackson @derJamesJackson]

Breaking: Mannheim court rules after two appeals that “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” is not an illegal usage of terrorist slogans as it is a widely used phrase among Palestinians that cannot be associated with Hamas.

The court questioned whether the interior ministry’s statement calling this a Hamas slogan was compatible with the constitutional right to free speech and the state’s duty of neutrality.

Court points out that phrase historically meant “the foundation of a secular democratic and egalitarian state in the whole of Palestine, in which Jews should experience full equality, but without the privileges of Zionism.”

[Omer Javed @omerjaved7]

#economics need to speak more in the language of masses, and learn more from the human mind. It needs more to listen to the plight of nature, and be more prepared from the state humans have brought it to.

[Progressive International @ProgIntl]

@VarshaGandikota “Many people talk about the coming “new order” — but our task is to build it. If we don’t, they will.” — PI co-General Coordinator @davidrkadler at the opening session of the #NIEO50 Congress.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was bombing and starving a walled-in population of two million, half of them children. Seriously, imagine it. Imagine the rage and vitriol. Imagine the nonstop media coverage.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, US media coverage of that war exceeded the media coverage of all US wars in the previous three decades. If Russia were deliberately and systematically exterminating civilians in Ukraine or anywhere else, the western media coverage of those war crimes would be many times more.

It’s almost cliché at this point to say “imagine if Russia or China did this”, but such comparisons are important for retaining a sense of perspective on just how evil the western political-media class is being about Gaza right now. We’re seeing articles come out in the mass media about starvation in Gaza which never once even mention the word “Israel”. Do you think that would be happening if this were being perpetrated by a government which defies the western empire? Of course not.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was deliberately blockading food from an imprisoned population of millions of people.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was relentlessly raining military explosives on densely packed urban areas known to be full of children.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was deliberately and methodically ethnically cleansing an oppressed population for entirely racist reasons.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if evidence that Russia or China are committing horrific war crimes was surfacing on a daily basis.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China were getting caught in lie after lie after lie while carrying out such a mass atrocity.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China tried to present them with blatantly fabricated evidence of crimes committed by the targeted population in justification of their atrocities.

We’d be living in a different political and media landscape. If Russia or China was doing what Israel is doing, entire presidential campaigns would have been built around who would oppose it most aggressively. Every sanction and embargo in the book would have been slammed upon the perpetrating government. The western press would be falling all over themselves to expose every atrocity and every lie and blaring those expositions as feature stories on every platform for months, and showering one another with awards for doing so.

Instead we get this. Government officials babbling nonstop about Israel’s “right” to “defend itself” and how this would all be over if Hamas didn’t keep fighting, while showering Israel with weapons to help it continue its atrocities. The mass media churning out a constant deluge of passive-language “Gazans are having trouble finding food for some reason” headlines and continuous reminders that this is all happening because of October 7, while repeating Israeli atrocity propaganda like it’s gospel truth. All viable US presidential candidates vowing their unconditional support for Israel while occasionally impotently finger-wagging at this or that aspect of Israel’s atrocities to avoid looking like complete psychopaths.

That contrast between how the western political-media class is acting toward the Gaza genocide and how we all know they’d be acting if an unaligned government was doing something similar is exactly why the US-centralized empire cannot be permitted to rule our world anymore. It pretends to stand for peace, justice, freedom and democracy, but in reality it just inflicts nonstop death and suffering upon human beings around the world and covers it up with propaganda spin from its servile mainstream press. It purports to uphold the “rules-based international order”, but all that means in practice is that it upholds an international order in which the US empire makes up the rules as it goes along and changes them as it pleases.

Humanity cannot allow itself to be abused and tyrannized by this murderous, hypocritical globe-spanning power structure any longer. A better world is possible, but we’re going to have to find a way to pry the talons of these monsters off the steering wheel first.

[Devika Dutt @devikadutt]

Im begging the economists to read and understand the idea of hegemony and that there is a hegemonic theoretical and methodological framework in economics where the dominant body of research DOES in fact make ridiculous assumptions to be tractable.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

To US audiences: in 5 months Israel has killed as many children as 675 Sandy Hook massacres combined. That is more than 4 Sandy Hook a day for Palestinian children. For 150 days. With US-manifactured weapons. Can you imagine the level of grief of the Palestinian people?

[kev joon @never_oppressed]

I’m old enough to remember how the Arab Spring started. I’m also old enough to remember that no one in the Western press objected to framing Mohamed Bouazizi’s self immolation as an act of heroic protest, which it was.