poetcurious

Photographer | Poet | Artist | Host

[Ounka @OunkaOnX]

Zeynep Sonmez says tournament organizers ban her from wearing Palestine-supporting pin

“I used to wear a pin. Tournaments no longer allow me to wear it. We had a discussion with the organizers because the Ukrainian flag is allowed but Palestine is not. They ultimately told us they definitely would not allow it ... I can use the vibration dampener and they can't object to that. That's why I put the watermelon symbol on my racket”

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

The real World Cup

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

Así fue el recibimiento a la selección de Egipto en Dallas (EEUU), mientras un jugador se hacía una foto con un niño, la policia estadounidense se encaró y agredió a miembros del staff nacional egipcio.

El mundial en AmeriKKKa quedará para siempre manchado por el racismo en EEUU mientras los medios a sueldo dicen que está siendo perfecto.

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@djmk Cheeky

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@shotbyshaun Theatre for the streets

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@djmk All AI needs to start disclosing its source materials and splitting profits with all they have scraped. That would put them out of business immediately.

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@YazzLFC The English have been making excuses for their crimes against Africans for centuries.

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@lancelachlan Idle land. Nothing can work hard enough for some people.

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@gyamfi__01 Did we run out of water?

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@shotbyshaun @ConstanceIloh More in summer than winter

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

Thank god the caption explains what we are seeing here. I thought his head was about to explode.

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 PICTURED: Andy Burnham takes a selfie with Labour MPs

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@shotbyshaun We stay loud so they can’t stay silent.

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@shotbyshaun 100% agree and it’s always been so. The establishment launch these commemorations with big budgets and energy that dwindle when not from a place of purpose.
However, in the community events that necessitate the wider continuation of this commemoration there is real love and joy…

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@shotbyshaun Trini food in Queens
Graffiti in the Bronx
Poetry in Brooklyn
Crate digging in LES
Thrifting in Bushwick
Cyphers in Union Square

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Every British PM’s nightmare

With Keir Starmer expected to fall on his sword shortly, here is my take on the conundrum facing Andy Burnham, indeed any and every British PM.

The true nature of Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States has far more to do with American financiers’ willingness to keep borrowing to purchase British government debt than with history, culture or Britain’s defence needs. This is the burden under which every UK Prime Minister must labour.

Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get hit”. The same could be said of prospective British prime ministers, especially after Liz Truss's spectacular defenestration. They all have a plan until the guilt market hits them. Andy Burnham, Nigel Farage, my friend Zack Polanski will have to face this, if they ever move into 10 Downing Street. I think they know it. But I doubt whether they appreciate the true magnitude or nature of their predicament.

Conventional wisdom has it that the bond market comprises people looking to invest their savings in a government's debt. They seek the right balance between a higher interest rate and the increased risk this implies. For example, higher bond yields may signal that the market expects future inflation to reduce the value of the fixed interest payments that their bonds will yield. Worse still, it may foreshadow a risk of government default, as occurred in Argentina and Greece.

That’s more or less what first year economics and finance students are taught. And it’s all true. Except that, in the case of the United Kingdom, this story misses the most fascinating and worrying aspect of its government bond or gilt market: The British government’s ability to refinance its public debt of almost 3 trillion pounds does not depend on savers choosing to invest in gilts. In fact, the British government’s ability to sell gilts hinges heavily on the willingness of numerous US-based financial institutions to borrow substantial sums of dollars to purchase British gilts, which they then use as collateral to borrow for their own purposes within the US.

And there’s the rub. There is a world of difference between needing to borrow from savers and from relying on speculators who borrow themselves to lend you. Savers who lend to you focus on your long-term ability to repay them. They may tolerate your desire to make infrastructural investments that could increase your debt in the short term, in return for future profits that will help you repay them when their bonds expire. However, speculators who borrow in order to lend are a different beast entirely. They are much jumpier and prone to margin calls: situations where, if the bonds they purchased from you begin to lose value, fearing they will not be able to repay their own creditors, they dump your bonds thus turning their decline into a crash.

The question arises: Why are British bonds, or gilts, so much more reliant on American speculators borrowing money to buy them than German bunds, Japanese bonds, Italian bonds or Greek bonds? Why does every British government rely so heavily on American leveraged capital inflows?

It all started in the 1950s when the City of London discovered how to avoid following the British Empire down the road to oblivion. The trick was to carve out a niche for the City within the emerging dollar empire, which was institutionalised within the Bretton Woods system. American financiers faced rigid capital controls within that system, but the City of London was able to alleviate these due to three invaluable features.

First, London’s trading expertise and legal system offered American financiers efficiency with immunity from all sort of interventions, including democratic accountability. Secondly, Britain’s network of offshore jurisdictions offered fabulous tax-minimisation opportunities. And, thirdly, London quickly became the holding depository of a torrent of petrodollars and eurodollars, not to mention the shadowy dollars created outside the United States by foreign bankers.

Thus, the Great British paradox: while the UK's real economy was in decline, the City of London was flourishing. When the Bretton Woods system collapsed in the 1970s, American financiers discovered another use for the City: they borrowed dollars in the US short-term to buy long-term UK government gilts, which they then sold quickly to repay their loans. They would then repeat this process again and again to profit handsomely. This is how the British government became reliant on leveraged US institutions. In order to continue operating as usual, London today requires American balance sheets that are willing to expand through borrowing and use British gilts as collateral in order to maintain liquidity in the US.

Put differently, the flipside of the City’s success story is that, even though it borrows in a currency that it prints, the UK is not financially sovereign. Yes, the City occupies a strategically important position within the global dollar system but the price for this is that the UK government’s sovereignty is circumscribed by its priority to maintain the City’s central position in American finance. While this remains the priority, the occupant of 10 Downing Street is like the captain whose powers are limited to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Is there an alternative to this peculiar form of financial subservience to US-based leveraged financiers? Yes, but it requires a willingness to accept a falling pound and falling house prices while increasing public investment through a new investment bank that issues bonds supported by the Bank of England.

Any Prime Minister who tries to maintain Britain’s financial servitude to US capital while also investing in public goods may well put Britain on a path towards the IMF, whose sole purpose, lest we forget, is to create the political leverage that will bring about – like it did in Greece – the permanent loss of sovereignty over tax and spending policy. The question is: Do the current contenders for Britain’s top job understand this?

https://t.co/xGrWjjcudY

[Tamer Nahed @Tamer_Alnoaizy]

A very dangerous new nightmare we are living in Gaza City, and no one in the world is paying attention to it.

Days ago, the Israeli army installed huge military cranes, each about 30 meters tall, on the eastern areas it controls. These cranes are equipped with machine guns and cameras, and they fire randomly and almost continuously at tents, streets, and exposed neighborhoods.

Gaza City is extremely narrow, only 10 kilometers wide. A single crane at that height is enough to expose the entire city from east to west. Every street, every square, every tent, every house has become completely exposed. There is no place to hide, and not a single moment of safety.

In just the past two days, three people were killed by fire from these cranes. One of them was sitting quietly with his father in a small café, trying to breathe for a few minutes. Hours later, a 5year old girl was killed while playing near her home.

These cranes have turned the entire city into an open field. The latest military technologies are directed at civilians. We have become an open testing ground for their new weapons. The horror is not just in the sound… it is the constant feeling of being an exposed target at all times, where even children cannot run in the street without fear.

[Mukhtar @I_amMukhtar]

Katie Hopkins was booted out of a pub in London during England’s World Cup match.

[poetcurious @poetcurious]

@bagshaw2112 78!

[yusuf kaplan @yenisafakwriter]

İsrail’in Gazze’de kullandığı soykırım silahlarının üretildiği yazılım sistemlerini çökertmek için “operasyon çeken” 5 aktivist Almanya’da yargılanıyor.

Gizli kahramanlar ve insanlığın yüzakı güzel insanlar onlar.

[Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana]

Just another reminder that Andy Burnham voted for the Iraq war - an illegal war that cost over a million lives.

He has refused to describe the systematic slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza as genocide.

So what will change? Nothing.

Arms sales to apartheid Israel will continue.

Palestine Action will remain banned, and more pensioners will be locked up.

Welfare will be cut to fund more weapons.

Immigration detention will expand, and mass deportations will continue.

Andy Burnham is not the second coming. He's the establishment's last roll of the dice.

We've already seen racist pogroms on our streets. That danger has not gone away.

So we must organise, build solidarity, and create power from below. Fascism isn't at the door. It's already here.

Only socialism can face down this barbarism.

[Wu Tang is for the Children @WUTangKids]

Happy Juneteenth