Reothabetse

[David Hundeyin @DavidHundeyin]

The entire country of South Africa is being systematically framed by social media bots. I've never seen anything like this before.

I've seen astroturfing of online discourse by bot farms, but I've never seen someone attempt to use AI bots to outnumber and drown out an entire country of 60 million people.

These accounts spewing the same "go beck and fix ya kantri" talking points with "🇿🇦" in their username are not real people! Open each account that you see posting that stuff. Check the signup date, open the media tab and check the replies tab so see what they interact with. They're all bots!

Some crazy person somewhere with more money than God is trying to set up an entire country using Twitter bots!

[Itumelanin @Itumelanin]

And the losses to corruption? Sickening.

[Itumelanin @Itumelanin]

R2 Trillion revenue collection in a 1% GDP growth economy with and average 4.5% inflation rate perpetually eroding the purchasing power of stagnant wages, and a 60% youth unemployment rate is a cause for a revolution.

[Briana Mills, LMFT ♿️🏳️‍🌈🍉 @theBrianaMills]

Therapy helps but let’s be clear. You can’t CBT your way out of capitalism. You can’t mindfulness your way out of racism. You can’t self care your way out of oppression. You can’t journal your way out of ableism. This isn’t about coping, it’s about deconstructing the systems.

[TSOGANG VUKANI AMKENI @Tsogang3]

The apartheid government built state owned entities for their people.

The ANC government is telling its people that government doesn't create jobs.

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

"Live within your means" assumes the means were set fairly to begin with.

In 1970, the average American CEO made about 20 times what their average worker made. Today that ratio is over 300 to 1.

Worker productivity has risen steadily for fifty years. Wages, adjusted for inflation, have barely moved.

The means did not stagnate because workers stopped living within them.

The means stagnated because the people setting compensation decided where the productivity gains would go, and they decided they would go up, not down.

You're telling people to budget their way out of a structural redistribution that has been happening above their heads for half a century.

That's not financial advice.

That's blaming the rower for the current.

[Àyànfè @Danny456080]

Industrialization requires a state willing to challenge the interests of foreign capital and the comprador elite that profits from raw material export

Elite who benefit from the current structure will resist industrialization because industrialization restructures who hold power

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

There's a reason the empire invests so heavily in stories about people who had nothing and built something.

Not because those stories are common.

Because they need to remain plausible enough that everyone holding their small "little savings, little security" believes their own modest stability is the foundation of something larger, something that could grow, something worth protecting rather than something worth burning down to build differently.

You don't organize against a system you still believe might reward you.

You organize against a system you have concluded will never reward you.

The empire's job, then, is simple in its outline and brutal in its execution: maintain just enough plausibility in the reward, for just enough people, for just long enough, that organized refusal never gets the critical mass it needs.

It has done this job for a very long time.

It is, in its way, the most successful management operation in human history.

[Kathryn Porter @KathrynPorter26]

This is correct and something I hear repeatedly from Africans, particularly government representatives

They are very clear that poverty is the biggest challenge they face and often say they see natural gas as their primary route to the industrialisation needed to lift them out of poverty

People in the developed world insisting they don't use fossil fuels ARE being neo-colonial. Decisions on African economic development should be made by Africans and not imposed by anyone else

[Taytalktome. @talktometay]

Fighting this nigga in the prime had to be some bullshit

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

I can’t fully explain to younger people how cool the internet used to be. We had open forums, personal websites, weird experimental pages, and chaotic corners of the web, before Amazon, Google, and Meta turned it into a sterile, closed ecosystem of clutter, and commerce.

[🐝 @beha_hun]

Who would’ve thought that forcing ads every 15 minutes would make young people look for ad-free alternatives?

[Àyànfè @Danny456080]

Singapore is not proof that small government and free markets produce development.

Singapore has one of the most interventionist states in the world.

The government owns land, directs capital, controls housing, runs sovereign wealth funds worth over $700 billion.

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

We are in the final stage of capitalism where global capital can’t expand or sustain past profits. It now consumes public institutions and key systems, sacrificing democracy, welfare, infrastructure, education, healthcare, and ecosystems for short-term gain.

[C H I E F, the NuriaStore Bookseller @bennetowuonda]

Did anyone else read dictionaries and encyclopedias for fun as a kid or am I just weird?

[Reothabetse @Reothabetse]

@mashelenw @Lord_Ori_ Aish bruh

[Nkosinathi Mashele @mashelenw]

@Lord_Ori_ I so wish Mr. Kubheka did not take the post of CEO.

[Richard Medhurst @richimedhurst]

The Western drive to dominate Iran has always been there — since before Israel even existed, and before the Resistance Axis or Islamic Revolution. And it has always been driven by imperialism and control of oil/gas.

It is not separate from Venezuela, Ukraine, Gaza. Same campaign

[Richard Medhurst @richimedhurst]

The British oil company that became BP discovered Iran's oil. When Iranians realized they were being robbed, they nationalized it — so MI6 & CIA toppled their democracy in 1953, installing a dictatorship. Iranians rose up in 1979 & the West has never forgiven them for it.

[History ZAR @HistorySAZAR]

Portrait of South African activist, actor, writer, poet and theatre director, John Matshikiza (1954 - 2008), Edinburgh, 17th August 1985. Credit: Steve Pyk