chitipa

[Midwestern Marx @MidwesternMarx]

How US imperialism 🇺🇸 works in 2026:
Michael Hudson’s Super-Imperialism for dummies.

After World War II, the US was left with the majority of the world’s gold reserves.

The Bretton Woods system was created, making the U.S. dollar (USD) convertible to gold at $35 an ounce while pegging the currencies of other countries to the USD.

At this time, the U.S. generally ran trade surpluses, meaning it exported more goods than it imported.

This would change throughout the 1950s as overseas military spending increased dramatically, particularly through the wars in Korea 🇰🇵 and Vietnam 🇻🇳.

This created a balance of payments deficit, where more money was leaving the U.S. than was coming in.

As a result, foreign banks and companies ended up with a glut of U.S. dollars and were pressured by the U.S. government not to exchange them for gold, as this could have led to a drain on U.S. gold reserves and undercut the basis of American global financial hegemony.

Instead, foreign banks invested their surplus USD into Treasury securities and other U.S. financial assets, recycling those dollars back into the American economy, where they could continue financing massive military spending.

When Nixon ended dollar convertibility into gold in 1971, this system was solidified because countries no longer had the option to exchange their USD for gold.

U.S. Treasury securities effectively replaced gold as the primary reserve asset of the international monetary system.

The U.S. could now run persistent deficits without having to worry about a drain on its gold reserves undermining its financial power.

Around this same period, the so-called petrodollar system emerged, ensuring that one of the world’s most important commodities would be priced in USD, further strengthening the dollar’s global role.

This is why we have a hyper-financialized U.S. economy that seems to produce nothing except war and Wall Street profits.

The recycling of USD allows elites to generate enormous paper wealth through financial speculation, interest, and rent extraction, rather than investing in productive economic activity such as manufacturing.

Trump promised to fix this problem on the campaign trail, but he was always far too stupid to understand what was actually going on, and far too corrupt to do anything about it even if he did.

Ultimately, this system has always been enforced at the barrel of a gun through U.S. military supremacy, which allows Washington to pressure other countries into complying with its financial demands.

[chitipa @lsimbeye1]

@pati_marins64 What do you mean" Irans government is not something to be proud of".kindly share which government Iran should emulate.

[chitipa @lsimbeye1]

@nxt888 ..maybe just maybe if they voted harder

[David Hundeyin @DavidHundeyin]

As they say in South Africa, if you beat the dog, the owner will come out.

The 'owner' of South Africa's current problems has finally come out.

[New Direction AFRICA @Its_ereko]

"Independence" on paper, but a colony in practice. 🌍🚨

​Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao exposes the silent military and cultural chains still binding Francophone Africa:

​The Mind: Your official language of instruction must be French.

​The Training: Your military can only be trained by France.

​The Equipment: Your weapons can only be bought from France.

​The Invasion Clause: France reserves the right to militarily intervene, without notice, to protect "French interests."

​If a nation cannot even choose its own language of instruction, train its own army or protect its borders from sudden external intervention, it is not sovereign—it is occupied.

​The awakening is here. The chains are breaking. ✊

[David Hundeyin @DavidHundeyin]

How you help yourself to "let go" of this "freedom" illusion that has been successfully sold to you by Hollywood and US-funded media and civil society is to ask yourself a few important questions:

What exactly is "freedom"? Is "freedom" the ability to thumbprint on a ballot paper that will be tippexed at the collation centre with your vote given to APC regardless of who you voted for?

Is "freedom" the ability to make social media skits insulting your president that was imposed on you by a foreign power even though nobody voted for him?

Is "freedom" the ability to rant endlessly on Twitter about your "bad leaders", knowing fully well that you are just wasting English and kilobytes to no end whatsoever?

Joseph Stalin once said “It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.”

I think that's a much more constructive way of viewing "freedom." Poor, deprived, uneducated people are not, and can never be "free" in any meaningful sense. What use are my "constitutional freedoms" if my stomach is empty? If my stomach and my brain are empty, I am automatically a slave to whoever can put bread in my belly and information in my head - and that person automatically has the power to turn me into a weapon fashioned against myself and those around me. In that situation, which describes most of modern Africa, can you describe me as "free"?

"Democracy" and "freedom" are some of oyibo's most dangerous linguistic weapons when used in the context of people living on a per capita income of less than $3,000/year. Where are you likelier to live a full, happy life - Nigeria or China? Nigeria supposedly has the "democracy" that China doesn't - why are Nigerians leaving that "freedom" and migrating to China for a better life, instead of the other way around? Why do North Koreans have a life expectancy that is over 20 years longer than Nigerians? Why do the Vietnamese have much better lives than most Nigerians who have ever existed?

All of the years you have spent thumbprinting ballot papers for candidates that the US embassy will never allow to win, China has been doing 5-year plans and becoming the world's greatest country.

[David Hundeyin @DavidHundeyin]

That is precisely why a country going through a socioeconomic transition needs stiff, firm, authoritarian, nationalist bastards as its leadership - not "democratically elected" people who are subject to votes from these miserable idiots who go digging for gold on an expressway.

Lee Kuan Yew told us decades ago that when his government built high rise apartments to take poor Singaporeans out of bamboo shacks, they deliberately began peeing in the elevators and taking countermeasures against the government's attempts to stop them from messing up their own infrastructure. They had to humiliate and punish people brutally before they started acting in ways that were beneficial to their own lives.

If you want to uplift poor, colonised people, you will have to do it AGAINST THEIR WILL. Colonised people are not sane and a revolutionary must not pretend that he is up against sane, rational people who want a better life. A colonised man will steal expensive paint and empty it out into a river so that he can sell the plastic buckets and use the peanuts to play BetPesa. He will dig up his country's first high speed motorway that is going to add hundreds of millions of dollars to everyone's collective pocket, so that he can find gold nuggets and sell them for $650. He will vandalise railway lines that are meant to improve his own life so that he can sell the metal to a scrap dealer and use it to buy some pussy that night.

Colonised people are among the biggest dangers to themselves and the countries they inhabit, and any leader wishing to improve his country's material conditions despite the presence of millions of colonised people who are out of their natural minds, must be prepared to go the Stalin, Mao and Lee Kuan Yew way. Re-education camps, public flogging and forced labour so offenders can repay their debt to society.

China was once burdened with millions of useless idiots like this, but deliberate state policy removed them from the census and transformed China into the world's most successful civilisation. Hard decisions must be made in pursuit of development.

[chitipa @lsimbeye1]

@Spearhead_Af Same story all over africa just replace the raw material...we have known this for decades yet we contine implementing western political and economic systems that sustain extraction.SOVERIGNITY FIRST.OUTCOMES NOT ELECTIONS.

[Afshin Rattansi @afshinrattansi]

History they don’t teach you: on this day in 1960, Fidel Castro nationalised Esso, Shell and Texaco in Cuba🇨🇺, breaking the United States’ draconian control of the Cuban economy.

After the Soviet Union began supplying Cuba with crude oil, Texaco, Esso, and British-Dutch Shell refused to refine Soviet oil for Cuba after pressure from the US government.

100% of Cuba’s oil refining capacity was controlled by these 3 corporations, meaning the US government and these corporations effectively held the Cuban economy at gunpoint. Fidel Castro responded to this by nationalising the assets of all 3 corporations.

Before Cuba's revolution, US financial interests owned 90% of Cuba’s mines, 80% of public utilities, 50% of railways, 40% of sugar production & 25% of bank deposits.

In the first 30 months after Fidel Castro and Cuba’s communists came to power, more classrooms were built in those 30 months than had been built in the previous 30 years. Within the first six months of Castro's government, 600 miles of road had been built across the island, while $300 million was spent on water and sanitation schemes.

Over 800 houses were constructed every month in the early years of the administration in a measure to cut homelessness, while nurseries and day-care centers were opened for children and other centers opened for the disabled and elderly.

With the arrival of the revolutionary government, Cuban healthcare was nationalised and expanded with heavy investment, bringing free healthcare access to millions.

Universal vaccination for childhood diseases was introduced, leading to infant mortality rates plummeting. Cuba's 'army of doctors' is now sent to crisis-hit countries around the world. Since 1963, more than 600,000 Cuban health workers have provided medical services in more than 160 countries.

Despite being under the illegal embargo imposed by the US, Cuba now has a higher life expectancy than the US, has more doctors per capita than the US, and is among the top 35 countries for lowest child mortality rates. Under Fidel Castro's rule, UNICEF declared severe child malnutrition to be eradicated.

Donald Trump’s looming war on Cuba is revenge for Cuban revolutionaries daring to break the US’ control of the island nation. Trump wants to return to the times when Cuba was effectively an American economic colony.

[The Spearhead @Spearhead_Af]

Africa Must Take Solidarity Seriously - Because The Enemy Does

Africa's adversaries know how to unite to exploit us, so it is the responsibility of Africans to unite similarly in the struggle for our own self-defence and liberation.

@Big_Mck explores this topic in this report.

[zellie @zellieimani]

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.” -Assata Shakur

[Àyànfè @Danny456080]

The colonial powers left through the front door and returned through the back via trade agreements, currency controls, and debt.

[chitipa @lsimbeye1]

@Danny456080 Beautiful

[chitipa @lsimbeye1]

@Bizkit68390579 @magattew Yes sir..structure and systems..people will always have problems..there is corruption in US and China.

[chitipa @lsimbeye1]

@Bizkit68390579 @magattew Yes thats true..we can t jump steps though...building from ground up or let in transnationals all at once?the structural adjustment programme has been disastrous for most countries..

[chitipa @lsimbeye1]

@Bizkit68390579 @magattew The over regulation ..I thought could be explianed this way..IMF comes in ,privatise national assets,get loans,govermment should cut social spending to receive balance of payment support,..GRZ reduced to licencing fees and tax collection.meanwhile tax holidays..

[chitipa @lsimbeye1]

@Danny456080 @TobiShina There is a word for this.....

[Àyànfè @Danny456080]

China didn’t abandon Confucian values to modernize.

China built its modern identity on top of its ancient one, africa keeps trying to modernize by erasing itself.

That’s not development, that’s continuation of the colonial project.

[Àyànfè @Danny456080]

China told the IMF to mind its business, built its own institutions, invested in its own people, protected its own industries until they were strong enough to compete.

Economic sovereignty is the foundation.

[chitipa @lsimbeye1]

@Danny456080 100. This is legacy issue of colonialism.The political borders and the language..