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Ben Norton Profile picture
Ben Norton
@BenjaminNorton
Journalist || Videos: https://t.co/nttyf01rBw || Editor of @GeopoliticaEcon || English/español
117 subscribers
Jan 15 • 24 tweets • 9 min read
As the US prepares to ban TikTok, many Americans are downloading RedNote / Xiaohongshu 小红书 and seeing the real China.

My experiences in China have been amazing. It's a beautiful country with very kind people. Everyone should try to visit

🧵 of videos/photos I took in China: Image
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Image Chongqing 重庆
Oct 14, 2024 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
To understand the genocide in Gaza, it's important to recognize Zionism's roots in European colonialism.

Israel was not created due to the Nazi Holocaust. The British empire endorsed creating Israel in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, when Europe was colonizing the Middle East🧵Image It's not a coincidence that the Balfour Declaration came immediately after the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, in which the British and French empires carved up the Ottoman empire's territory and established their own colonies in the Middle East (West Asia). Image
Aug 17, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
The neo-feudal corporate landlords at Apple are charging creators on Patreon a 30% fee for all new memberships registered using the iOS app.

It's the perfect symbol of the future of the economy -- neo-feudal rent extraction by corporate monopolies.

🧵This is how the scam works: Image It all started with Big Tech corporations first offering supposedly "free" services (which were paid for by selling users' information).

Those "free" platforms soon became monopolies, and were so deeply embedded into the economy that they are now (privatized) digital utilities.
Aug 8, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
🚨The US allows its athletes to cheat, including at the Olympics.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) says US agency USADA let athletes use steroids in exchange for spying on other violators.

This is the Rules-Based Order™ -- the US violates the rules whenever it's convenient.
Image Russia was banned from the Olympics in 2019 due to doping. Now we know that the US has allowed athletes to use steroids (ie cheat) since at least 2011, with no punishment

Also, Russia was banned this year due to the war in Ukraine, but the US invaded Iraq and faced no punishment
Jul 31, 2024 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
The US State Department supported Nazism in the 1930s, saying genocidal fascism "must succeed", or communism would win.

The US charge d'affaires in Germany praised the so-called "more moderate section of the [Nazi] party, headed by Hitler".

These are objective historical facts.
Image Before WWII even ended, the US government recruited genocidal Nazi monsters to launch its cold war on the Soviet Union.

Later, the CIA recruited Nazi spies like infamous criminal Reinhard Gehlen, Third Reich's spy chief on the Eastern Front, to continue Hitler's war on the USSR.

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Jul 23, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Crucial point by prominent Palestinian scholar Joseph Massad:
"The claim that the Israel lobby controls US policy in the Middle East amounts to absolving the US of responsibility for its imperialist policies".

Israel is an extension of US imperialism.
middleeasteye.net/big-story/why-… The US empire has always violently opposed anti-colonial struggles.

The US gov't has been an "implacable enemy of all national liberation groups".

"Why the US would then support Palestinian national liberation absent the Israel lobby is something this argument fails to address" Image
Jul 16, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Trump's VP pick JD Vance was created in a political petri dish by billionaire oligarch Peter Thiel.

"PayPal Mafia Don" Thiel founded CIA/Pentagon-backed mass surveillance corporation Palantir.

He was an FBI informant and got his start at CIA-linked law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.
Image Far-right billionaire oligarch Peter Thiel, a CIA-linked FBI informant who has funded Donald Trump and his "MAGA" allies, also funded a spy company that hacked WhatsApp.
forbes.com/sites/thomasbr…
Jul 14, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
US "democracy" is nothing but political violence!

All US presidents for decades (both Republicans & Democrats) have waged nonstop war, in Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.

The US has killed MILLIONS. But I guess foreign lives don't matter.



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Image "There is absolutely no place for political violence in oUr deMoCrAcy" Image
Jun 30, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
In this important speech, the director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University notes:
-US-China "competition" is "ideological"
-The US wants to subordinate China
-"The socialist path led by the CPC is the unchangeable path for China"
eastisread.com/p/yao-yang-on-… This influential Chinese economist explains how the Reform and Opening Up started by Deng was pivotal to develop the productive forces, after a time of destructive ultra-leftism. But China went too far to the right by the 2000s, so it's shifting left again
eastisread.com/p/yao-yang-on-…
Jun 17, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
China's economy is bigger than official GDP statistics indicate, because it uses a measurement system based on manufacturing production, under-counting services.

US GDP data, meanwhile, is distorted by expensive "services" like imputed rent and legal fees
asiatimes.com/2024/06/whats-… "The affordability crisis in Western economies, the US in particular, is largely driven by inflation of necessary services – rent, healthcare, education, childcare – not by manufactured goods"

When those costs go up, US GDP goes up.

This is why "number go up" is not always good
May 23, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This chart shows why it's nonsense to talk about "inter-imperialist rivalry" in the 21st century. Monopoly finance capital is concentrated to an unprecedented degree.

There is one imperialist system, centered in the USA. Its heart is Wall Street. Its blood is the US dollar. Image Capitalists from all over the world store their wealth largely in US dollar-dominated assets. The US hosts 60.5% of the total value of global stock markets. 40+% is owned by foreign investors.

The US government is dedicated to protecting the wealth of the global capitalist class Image
Apr 25, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The US already is the authoritarian police state that they have told you for decades to be afraid of.

If you oppose the empire's genocidal crimes, police and state troopers will attack you and arrest you. "Free speech" only exists for rich oligarchs.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said anti-genocide protesters at the Uni. of Texas "belong in jail"

“Arrests being made right now & will continue until the crowd disperses. These protesters belong in jail”, he said

The real face of the US authoritarian regime
thehill.com/homenews/educa…
Apr 19, 2024 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
The economics of imperialism: A new study shows how "the US’ exorbitant privilege has become a rich world privilege".

The world system has persistent capital income transfers from the poorest to the richest, equal to 1% of GDP of top 20% countries, and 2% of GDP for the top 10%.

Source: wid.world/news-article/t…Image
Image The perpetual debt trap of imperialism: "Foreign capital income flows result in a net transfer from poor to rich countries of around 1.2% of the rich’s GDP. This big net transfer of resources allows the richest countries to incur in bigger trade deficits without the need to in-debt themselves to finance them.

"Moreover, it forces the bottom 80% of the world to record trade surpluses to be able to finance such a transfer. If they fail to do so, then they would need to compensate by acquiring more debt, which reinforces the dynamics".Image
Jan 26, 2024 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
🚨 The president of the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) has said there is sufficient evidence for the genocide case against Israel. Image The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has said some allegations against Israel fall within the provisions of the Genocide Convention, and it applies to Palestinians. Image
Jan 5, 2024 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Western economists love to selectively quote Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, but conveniently ignore the lengthy chapter he wrote on how colonialism was central in the creation of capitalism.

Smith discussed the "injustice" of the "plundering of the defenceless natives". 🧵 Image Adam Smith wrote how colonialism enriched Western colonial powers:

"To the natives however... all the commercial benefits which can have resulted from those events have been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes"

Europeans "commit[ed] with impunity every sort of injustice" Image
Dec 7, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
It's important to understand that the US is using Guyana to try to destabilize Venezuela.

US oil mega-corporation ExxonMobil essentially controls Guyana's government.

They're using British colonial-era rulings to try to take Venezuelan oil-rich territory
theintercept.com/2023/06/18/guy…
Image "In Guyana, it’s become hard to distinguish where the oil company ends and the government begins. Exxon executives join the Guyanese president in his suite at cricket matches, and the vice president regularly hosts press conferences to defend the oil company". Image
Nov 20, 2023 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Far-right extremist Javier Milei won Argentina's presidential election.

Milei wants to:
-legalize the sale of children and human organs
-abolish public healthcare, education, and transportation
-abandon monetary sovereignty and adopt the US dollar

He says his dead dog Conan speaks to him from the afterlife and advises him on economic policy.

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Image Argentina was invited to join BRICS, but far-right president-elect Javier Milei has pledged to withdraw.

The extremist boasted: "Our geopolitical alignment is with the U.S. and Israel. We are not going to align with communists" perfil.com/noticias/polit…
Aug 9, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
A document proves the US State Department pressured Pakistan's government in March 2022 to overthrow PM Imran Khan, due to his neutrality over the proxy war in Ukraine

This is exactly what I reported a year ago, but it was smeared as a "conspiracy theory"
theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imr… Days before he was overthrown in April 2022, Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan said top US diplomat Donald Lu was organizing a “foreign conspiracy” to topple him.

Video of Lu testifying in the Senate confirmed the US was pressuring Khan to cut off ties with Russia
geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/04/04/pak…
Aug 2, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
I made a video explaining how the US and France are threatening intervention to re-install a pro-Western regime in Niger.

Niger produces uranium needed for EU nuclear energy and hosts strategic US military bases.

(Link to full video below)

Burkina Faso and Mali have warned… https://t.co/Ig5D41IyPFtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
US/France threaten intervention in resource-rich Niger - Fears of war in West Africa

Full video here:
Aug 1, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
In addition to Niger's resources like uranium and gold, one of the reasons the US is so angry about the nationalist coup is the Pentagon spent $110+ million there building a massive drone base it uses to control the Sahel.

The CIA also has a base in Niger
pbs.org/newshour/show/… US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Niger in March, while pressuring African countries to cut ties with China and Russia

"Niger ha[d] become a critical US ally in the Sahel region"

It has 2 US drone bases and 800 US military personnel were there
democracynow.org/2023/3/16/anto…
Jul 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
China's socialist government has overseen almost 3/4ths of global extreme poverty reduction.

Decolonization struggles in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s (which were led overwhelmingly by socialists) were responsible for much of the initial poverty reduction -- after centuries of… https://t.co/uIk4FgZiQu https://t.co/mrxfCRT51Ttwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Image We should also keep in mind that there are many legitimate methodological critiques of World Bank poverty data.

It is based on average money earned per day, so if subsistence farmers whose families have lived on communal land for generations are kicked off by multinational… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…