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William Murphy Profile picture
@420GHz
Jul 16 • 12 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
THREAD: The Hidden Empire—How U.S. Private Investors Gobble Up Global Land (And Why It Matters) 🧵 Image
1/ While everyone talks about US military bases abroad, a quieter conquest is happening: American private investors buying up foreign land at record rates. From Brazilian farms to Lisbon apartments, here’s what’s happening—and why it’s neo-colonialism.
2/ FARMLAND GRABS: US agribusiness and pension funds control 8.3 million hectares of foreign soil—equal to 80% of Portugal. Much is in Brazil, where soy barons like SLC Agricola profit from deforestation.

📌 Source: @LandMatrix landmatrix.org
3/ LUXURY COLONIZATION: 30% of London’s posh homes are owned by offshore shell companies—many tied to US billionaires. Portugal’s "Golden Visa" program saw Americans buy €500M+ in property last year, pricing out locals.

📌 @business bloom.bg/3RZJ4Q3
4/ RESOURCE PIRATES: US firms like @Chevron and @Cargill lock down 1M+ hectares of African/Latin American land via secretive contracts for palm oil, mining, and timber. Locals get displaced; Wall Street gets rich.

📌 @open_contracts openlandcontracts.org
5/ CORPORATE FEUDALISM: @Blackstone—the world’s largest landlord—owns 300,000+ EU homes, many bought cheap after the 2008 crisis they helped create. Berliners now protest "Blackstone rents."

📌 @FT archive.ph/FT-Blackstone
6/ THE SHELL GAME: The Pandora Papers revealed US elites use Caribbean tax havens to hide foreign landholdings. A single Miami firm helped clients buy $4B+ in global real estate anonymously.

📌 @ICIJorg icij.org/investigations…
7/ WHY IT MATTERS: This isn’t "investment"—it’s dispossession. When US capital turns Haiti’s farms into sweatshops or Mozambican forests into golf courses, it’s imperialism without soldiers.
8/ FIGHTING BACK:

-Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (@MST_Oficial) occupies agribusiness land
-Barcelona bans Airbnb-style rentals
-Ghana just limited foreign land buys

Solidarity beats speculation.
9/ Lenin warned about finance capital’s global stranglehold. Today’s land grabs prove him right.

📚 Free read: Imperialism, Highest Stage of Capitalism marxists.org/archive/lenin/…
RT to expose modern colonialism!

@OaklandInst
@GRAIN_org

#LandBack #HousingForAll
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More from @420GHz

William Murphy Profile picture
Jul 13
Thread: China Won—Here’s Why 🧵 Image
1/8 The great divergence began in 2001. As America spent $2.3 trillion destroying Afghanistan (@BrownUniversity), China built the Qinghai-Tibet Railway—the world's highest train line. Twenty years later, US failure stares at Chinese rails reaching Europe. #PostAmericanWorld
2/8 $8 trillion in US war spending bought chaos. China's $8.1 trillion infrastructure investment built 40,000km of high-speed rail, lifted 800M from poverty, and achieved higher life expectancy than America (@WHO). Bombs boost @LockheedMartin's stock; bridges boost longevity.
Read 10 tweets
William Murphy Profile picture
Jul 13
Thread: Dialectical Materialism Against Imperialism: A Unified Critique of Capitalism’s False Scarcity, the Limits of Monetary Reform, and China’s Path 🧵 Image
1/15
Capitalism’s most insidious lie is the myth of the "fixed pie"—the idea that wealth is finite and workers demanding more would destabilize the economy. This zero-sum narrative justifies exploitation while obscuring the reality of systematic theft.
2/15
The truth? Scarcity is manufactured. In the U.S., $50 billion is stolen from workers annually through wage theft alone. Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been looted of $24 trillion in mineral wealth since 1885. The resources exist—they’re hoarded.
Read 18 tweets
William Murphy Profile picture
Jul 10
The ruling class's greatest trick? Convincing the exploited they need their exploiters. From ancient slavery to modern capitalism, psychological chains outlive material ones. Here's how this lie persists—and how we break it. 🧵 Image
Under feudalism, serfs believed lords protected them from wolves. Today, workers credit CEOs for "creating jobs"—as if factories run on boardroom meetings rather than labor. The master-slave dialectic evolved, but its core remains: manufactured dependence. (2/8)
Capitalism rebranded subjugation as "freedom": the "right" to sell your labor to monopolies, go into debt for healthcare, or starve if you refuse wage slavery. All while being told billionaires earned their wealth through "risk" (with workers' lives as collateral). (3/8)
Read 9 tweets
William Murphy Profile picture
Jul 7
1/ Things will get worse before they get better.

We're witnessing the birth of a new ruling class: Big Finance + Silicon Valley technocrats.

Their product? The 21st century surveillance state.

Let’s connect the dots. 🧵 Image
2/ Exhibit A: Palantir.

Founded with CIA seed money, now designing AI systems for:

-Predictive policing
-Military targeting
-Immigration enforcement

This isn’t conspiracy theory—it’s their business model.
3/ The merger of capital and state is now complete.

VCs fund surveillance tech → Governments buy it → Technocrats rotate between both worlds.

Result? A public-private panopticon where every "innovation" becomes a control lever.
Read 9 tweets
William Murphy Profile picture
Jun 29
The situation in Gaza today meets several criteria of genocide as defined under international law (1948 Genocide Convention), according to legal scholars, human rights organizations, and UN experts. Here’s a breakdown of why this term is being used with increasing urgency: 🧵 Image
1/ What is genocide?

Under international law (Genocide Convention), it means acts committed to destroy a group (in whole or part). This includes:

-Mass killing

-Inflicting starvation

-Destroying homes/hospitals

-Forced displacement
2/ Mass Killing

-38,000+ Palestinians killed (70% women/children)

-Targeted attacks on shelters, hospitals, refugee camps

-Mass graves found with hands tied (execution-style)
Read 12 tweets

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