Bit of a soft response from Russia though isn't it? The EU is providing billions to Ukraine in advanced weaponry, ammunition, logistics and information.

Russia is now stuck in Ukraine with about 250,000 dead Russians on the conservative end and the EU has some spoilt food and a few people missed their holidays. The EU hasn't even lost a soldier in this war and don't think they have too much to be afraid of a busted Russian army relying on donkeys for logistics.

You carry on being a scared little baby if you like though, I don't care.

Defending democracy by attacking your peaceful neighbour and stealing their land and resources? I'm sure it makes sense in your head but the rest of us are laughing at you. Putin's rule over Russia ticks all of the boxes on the fascist checklist yet somehow the weak controlled Russian opposition are the imperialists?

As it was laid out for you in a graph a child could understand,

Nobody misunderstood the simple graph, don't know who you are arguing with here, your fighting shadows dude.

It's the developing nations fault they're not consuming all the world's resources??? WTF?

Those resources in your graph are still underground. Russia used to be a superpower with capable industry and manufacturing, they were the nation that built all of the weapons Putin has wasted in his stupid war in Ukraine. Under Putin Russia builds nothing, adds no value to the simple resources it pulls from the ground and sells. Putin and his buddy's get rich and the Russian people get shafted.

Who is the imperialist in this? I'm from Ireland buddy. Russia is currently the one partaking in imperial land and resource theft in Ukraine. I don't think you understand the meaning of the words you use.

The quote was from the Simpsons, the monorail episode to be precise. I was referencing the fact that for all of Russia's resource wealth they are useless at turning this into finished products the world wants to buy, moving up the value chain and creating more wealth for the Russian people. Instead your leaders, much like in third world nations, extract resources and sell them. I can't believe I had to spell that out for you, you're welcome.

My point is that a Russia with resources is like a mule with a spinning wheel, no one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it.

Capitalism is cancer that way. It grows and consumes all. It will kill us all

I'm not fan of capitalism myself but prefer it to the Fascist authoritarian klepto-shitocracy that Russia presents to the world.

I'm saying that the natural resources is behind the West's adversarial relationship with Russia,

Oh yea, the adversarial relationship where the west spent over €150 billion per annum buying these natural resources from Russia.

Putin wants NATO to back the fuck off

NATO presents no threat to Russia, as Russia in its weakened state keeps reminding us, they have a large arsenal of nuclear weapons to keep themselves safe. MAD makes a NATO attack an impossibility. What you really mean is back the fuck of Ukraine, it belongs to Russia. Russia is currently in the finding out phase that Ukraine is a sovereign nation of bad ass motherfuckers who will bleed you dry.

The idea that Russia is the threat to Europe or anyone else is rather ridiculous.

Ukraine and Georgia would say otherwise, your point is ridiculous.

The Rand Corporation wrote a whitepaper that basically translates to "how to fuck up Russia and take all their shit"

How is a war mongering conservative think tank talking about doing something as bad as Russia literally doing the same thing to Ukraine? I don't have any tears for you crybaby.

And yeah, China is the future. Get used to it. The unipolar world order is over

I'm pretty chill about that, not a fan of America hegemony myself. Russia has fallen so far from one of two superpowers in the world to China's yappy little lap dog who shits oil for it's master. Every day this stupid war continues weakens Russia's position in this new world order. Lenin, Stalin and the boys would be pissed at how the toxic troll in the Kremlin has reduced Russia's standing.

Your tankienomics chart means nothing, resources in the ground do not equal money in the bank, which is what Russia is actually running out of.

You should put a larger Chinese flag next to a smaller Russian flag on that picture to more accurately depict who will own Russia after the war is over. I'm eagerly awaiting China announcing that they have to go into Russian Manchuria to protect the persecuted ethnic Chinese living there. 6 million Russians looking nervously at 100 million Chinese just over the border. Russia should probably just give the region to China, at least China knows what to do with resources once they have been pulled out of the ground. The orcs can't do anything other than extract and steal.

You obviously have not been paying attention to the war in Ukraine the last year or so. Russia is having a bad time out there, there is no way to dress up Russia's awful performance on the battlefield over the last 18 months. The conflict has been at a stalemate for the last 3 years or so with neither country able to make decisive gains on the battlefield.

Russia has been financing the war using a sovereign wealth fund that amounted to around 300 billion dollars before the war and a similar amount of debt in preferential loans to the MIC. This wealth fund is now dry and the debt burden at high interest rates are seeing increasing rates of default. Russia's only real source of income is from selling oil and gas which has gotten a lot harder with all of the sanctions and secondary sanctions leveled against the country. Ukraine has been damaging the large oil refineries at increasing frequency harming Russia's ability to produce the oil it desperately needs to sell.

This war has been incredibly expensive for Russia, if we add up the 300 billion sovereign wealth fund, the 300billion in bank debt to the 300 billion confiscated by the west to the budgetary spending we are at well over a trillion dollars. Using Mediazonas conservative estimate of confirmed Russian deaths on the front line we are now at 282,993 dead Russian soldiers, of which 7,920 are officers, this has been a massive waste of time and money to take control over slightly more of Ukraine than Russia already had control of at the beginning of 2022.

In short, winners dictate the terms of victory and it would be laughable to suggest that what Russia is currently doing in Ukraine resembles anything close to winning. Russia should take what it can get as soon as possible because as Russia's economy continues its slide down the toilet there is no guarantee that the terms offered in a years time or two will be anywhere near as good as they are being offered at present. I have been following the war since the very beginning and have seen Russia's ability on the battlefield decline sharply over the last few years. They currently have no conceivable path to victory, I don't even know what victory at this stage would look like for them.

You have gotten awfully quiet with your denials of forced labor.

Famine was ended via collectivization and industrialization, well before "market incentives" were introduced

Incorrect, the collectivisation happened first and the massive famines followed, 15-45 million dead in China, 5.7-8.7 million dead in the Soviet Union.

As for centralization, I'm 100% award that market economies trend towards centralization. That's my point. I'm confused what you think I'm trying to say, here.

What does 100% award mean? I'm also confused. What I am trying to say is that you are extrapolating the tenancy of business to monopolise in free market economies to mean that centralisation in controlled state authoritarian societies will yield the same efficiencies.

As for your adventure in Hong Kong, you're incredibly defensive of British colonialism

No I am not and I never set foot in Hong Kong during the colonial period.

see anti-colonialism as China going back on promises to colonizers.

No I see it as going back on the promises to the people of Hong Kong. I still have family that lived there as well as family who had to flee to avoid persecution. Before you say it, they are all native Chinese.

Imperialism and colonialism are predicated on extraction,

Extracting resources is not colonialism or imperialism.

You can't even stay consistent in the same paragraph, how many times in our discussion have you contradicted yourself and fallen flat on your face?

What's important is the elimination of sovereignty, and the extraction of surplus value. There is no cultural erasure in Xinjiang nor Tibet.

The UN report you provided directly contradicts this, the master of contradiction strikes again! You make this too easy, I'm starting to lose interest in you.

As for your lies about sterilization, they come from Adrian Zenz

I have a range from several reports, not one figure from a chap I have never even heard of.

You get onto me for providing a source that links almost entirely western news sources when available

No, I disputed your Chinese think tank source.

I recommend actually reading the [UN report

I did, you obviously didn't.

107. Official population figures indicate a sharp decline in birth rates in XUAR from 2017. 242 Data from the 2020 Chinese Statistical Yearbook, covering 2019, shows that in the space of two years the birth rate in Xinjiang dropped approximately 48.7 per cent, from 15.88 per thousand in 2017 to 8.14 per thousand in 2019. The average for all of China is 10.48 per thousand.243

108. Uyghur-majority areas represented the bulk of this decline, with two of the largest Uyghur prefectures especially affected by it. In Hotan, which is 96 per cent Uyghur,245 birth rates went from 20.94 per cent in 2016246 to 8.58 per cent per thousand births in 2018.247 Similarly, the birth rate in Kashgar, which is approximately 92.6 per cent Uyghur,248 dropped from 18.19 per cent in 2016249 to 7.94 per cent per thousand births in 2018.250 Even taking into account the overall decline in birth rates in China,251 these figures remain unusual and stark. The same applies to the figures regarding sterilisations and IUD placements in XUAR, with official data indicating an unusually sharp rise in both forms of procedures in the region during 2017 and 2018, in comparison with the rest of China.252 For example, in 2018, sterilisations in XUAR stood at 243 per 100,000 inhabitants, whereas the overall figure for China was a fraction thereof at only 32.1 per 100,000 inhabitants.253

109. Several women interviewed by OHCHR raised allegations of forced birth control, in particular forced IUD placements and possible forced sterilisations with respect to Uyghur and ethnic Kazakh women. Some women spoke of the risk of harsh punishments including “internment” or “imprisonment” for violations of the family planning policy. Among these, OHCHR interviewed some women who said they were forced to have abortions or forced to have IUDs inserted, after having reached the permitted number of children under the family planning policy.259 These first-hand accounts, although limited in number, are considered credible.

Next time read the source before you once again make a fool of yourself. I will not bother with the Chinese report because China says China is innocent does not hold any weight to anyone with a shred of intelligence or integrity. You are being intellectually dishonest for even suggesting this, the USA also disputes the civilian death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan, do you accept them at their word?

You have done nothing to convince me that you are anything more than a biased imperial boot licker. I have come to the conclusion over the last few years that there are plenty of weak minded people out there that need a strong authoritarian daddy figure to tell them what to do. Xi, Putin, Trump, Netenyahu etc. have made their bases unquestionably obedient and infantilised. You keep on defending the demonstrably indefensible to the point where you just look like a fool. You have zero ability to think critically, trying to feed me biased state propaganda to counter independent UN reports (China even sits as a permanent member of the security council FFS). You are not an honest actor but a biased brainwashed stooge. You imperial apologists are a major part of everything that is wrong with this world, enabling all of the misery in this world from Algeria to Afghanistan, Tibet to Timbuktu. You think that your colonialism is somehow different because it is the colonialism your "team" is perpetrating. I am Irish, I understand colonialism in all its forms, we were one of the original testing grounds. To quote another Irishman, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".

The USSR ended famine in the 1930s, after it collectivized and industrialized agriculture with combine-harvestors. Outside of wartime, there were no more famines. China went through a similar route, once they had industrialized agriculture,

You fail to mention that in both empires the famines ended because they changed the way the system worked introducing market incentives. The Chinese rejected the collectivisation model in favour of the Household Responsibility System. You dismiss the power of direct financial incentives in all of our dealings because it doesn't fit your theories but it is what works in the real world.

Regarding the tendency for markets to centralize, this is a fact.

The paper you sent that I have a quick read of (I am not and I am sure you have not read the whole thing!) is based on capitalist economies and the tenancy towards monopoly.

"Along these dimensions, our data (outside the U.S.) come from European countries (Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, Denmark, and the U.K.), Canada, Australia, Singapore, and South Korea. "

You are again ignoring the role of financial incentives in centralisation. Your logic is along the lines of "chickens are animals, chickens lay eggs. Cows are also animals, therefore cows also lay eggs."

As for your adventures in Hong Kong, you deliberately referred to the colonial era as "cool," and the part where China regained its sovereignty as bad

So I am a colonist because I though Hong Kong was cool before China reneged on its promises and imposed it's authoritarian rule over the people. You just put labels on things that you like or don't like but don't even understand the meanings the rest of the world understands for these words.

Tibetans and Uyghurs are Chinese. They are not Han, but Han people living in Xinjiang and Tibet are not colonizers.

They are Chinese by force, these regions were annexed under military force. Since you are so slippery with your language, let's get a few definitions clear so you can understand that China is just as much of an empire as the west you despise for the same reason.

Imperialism: The policy or practice of a nation extending its power and influence over other countries or regions, often through military force, economic dominance, or political control.

Empire: A large political unit or sovereign state made up of several distinct territories or nations ruled by a single supreme authority (such as an emperor, monarch, or dominant government).

Colonization is the act or process by which a nation or foreign power sends people to settle in, take control of, and govern another country, territory, or region

Immigration is not colonialism

You said it was when I did it, get your story straight you absolute hypocrite.

Colonialism is a relationship between exploiter and exploited, and central China is not exploiting periphery China.

I have already discussed the forced labor which I will return to later. China also extracts resources from these regions. Xinjiang produces a massive share of the worlds polysilicon critical for solar panels, beryllium critical for semiconductors. 10% of the worlds aluminium comes from Xinjiang which is exploited by the Chinese automotive industry. Xinjiang also produces the majority of China's cotton, heavily utilising forced harvesting labor to supply global brands.

Then we get to the cultural and demographic eradication. Systemic birth suppression, under the Law on Promoting ethnic Unity and Progress we get forced sterilisation, forced abortions, mandatory IUD implantation. Birthrates in Hogan and Kashgar have plummeted by 60-84%. Forced separation of children when parents are sent to labor or "re-education camps" these state run camps strip the children of their language, religion and culture. Physical erasure of thousands of mosques, shrines, graveyards and monuments.

In Tibet we have more of the same with state owned enterprises engaging in large scale mining of gold, copper lithium and rare earth minerals. Displacement of nomadic peoples to build these mines. China has built or planned 200 mega scale hydroelectric dams on Tibet's rivers since 2000. These dams are built primarily to export power to Chinese industrial centers. We also have similar cultural eradication programmes to Xinjiang.

Both states serve as a testing ground for China's surveillance economy. Over 1400 Chinese tech firms have used Xinjiang's population to test predictive policing, biometric data collection, facial recognition and gait analysis tracking etc.

Sounds an awful lot like an exploitative imperial colonisation project to me. You are probably too busy licking boots to notice or do any research on the subject.

As for the claims of forced labor, these are false. I already provided evidence of this.

Now on to this one, how dare you insult both of our intelligences by dismissing a report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights with a report from a think tank with opaque funding. Given their editorial slant it is quite obvious that they are funded by China. This is about as much use as saying well China disputes that China is using forced labor against it's subjugated people's. Would you believe a report written by the Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute?

China is just as bad as the other imperial nations, you are an imperial apologist. As for Ireland, I am under no illusion what Ireland is currently, we are a small nation and as such are not a rule maker but a rule taker. We do just fine and have managed to rise from poverty to prosperity by playing our own game within the system we have been placed in.

You believe Marxists see private property as a sin

No I don't, I understand the differences between Marxism and Georgism. Marx did actually call for the "abolition of private property" which includes land. I believe that Henry George had a better understanding of this than Marx who was very timid when it came to confronting the landed class.

As for Engineers needing less training to swap from industry to industry, yes, this is a simplification. However, the fact of the matter is that within branches of engineering, transferability is high.

You are missing my point that as our human knowledge increases, professions are becoming more and more specialised, not less. You are also discounting the experience these professionals gain from years of practice, there is no shortcut to gaining experience, this takes time and practice. Engineering is but one example, brain surgeons do not transfer to being heart or orthopedic surgeons or oncologists. These are highly specialised fields that take decades to gain proficiency .

Smithing, textiles and carpentry are simpler fields to retrain in sure but proficiency and mastery in those fields take years. You have also not answered how in this advanced stage of communism you are going to get all of the experienced doctors to stay in the country when their skills can earn them a better quality of life in a market based economy?

The only answer to this is of course authoritarianism. Close the borders and force these citizens to work. Authoritarianism is the glue that holds China together.

The fact that markets centralize, and the fact that planned economy is more efficient with centralized production than with non-centralized production, is not a "lie." It's basic economics.

How did that work out for China and the Soviet Union when it came to farming in the 1950s? Millions of avoidable deaths from starvation. You live in theory and are in dispute with reality. Economics is not a science of universal truths but a study of complex systems that you don't understand and over simplify in accordance with your gospel.

As for Han populations increasing, this isn't colonialism.

Yet me living in Hong Kong somehow is? Explain how what I did was colonialism but what the Chinese migrants are doing is not?

Connolly was anti-imperialist to the core, correct, which is why you do him a disgrace by labeling every socialist government you don't like as colonial or neocolonial.

Wonder how he would feel about the forced labor in these annexed territories? You are awfully quiet on that now after demanding sources in your last comment. You are still claiming this is somehow not the theft of their labor. You are just a massive hypocrite or delusional. How on earth was China taking Tibet by force in 1950 not colonialism? The only government I am talking about here is China, I never called any other government colonial or neocolonial, just the one I am talking about that deserves it.

You keep making the moralist argument that private property is a sin.

Where did I make that argument? I see no sin in private property ownership.

However, the idea that it takes a tremendous amount of time to train an experienced engineer in one field on another field is also incorrect

Wild statement, you are going to need to back that up. You are discounting years of specialist training just to qualify and then the years of experience required to actually become useful in the field. You are simplifying something you don't understand to fit your argument. Are you aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect, this is the perfect example of that. The same goes for my own field of dentistry or the field of medicine which I also have knowledge of the time it takes to train or even the field of legal specialisation.

Do better, be serious.

I can't believe you ended your uninformed rant with this, you are too funny dude :)

You keep pretending Marxism is about dogmatically paying everyone equally, and I have explained time and time again that you are confusing late-stage communism with early-stage socialism

I'm not confusing anything, I understand perfectly well that China is not a communist country and has terrible wealth inequality that is increasing by the year. The transition to full communism is a lie sold to the workers so the factory owners can continue to exploit the workers surplus labor.

As for advancements since Marx, I agree! Lenin, Walter Rodney, Cheng Enfu, and many other economists have carried his work forward. You haven't given any examples,

I could list off a few economists too but I fail to see the point.

just continued to defend your own colonial adventures in Hong Kong while defending the European safety nets achieved by pilfering the surplus value of the global south.

You have still failed to explain how my adventures were colonial. You have also skipped over the part where I discussed the increasing migrant Han Chinese populations in the annexed capitals of Xinjiang and Tibet and how that is not colonialism. Your own arguments are not even consistent.

The bits on "forced labor" are entirely unsourced on your part.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/01/un-experts-alarmed-reports-forced-labour-uyghur-tibetan-and-other-minorities

Here you go buddy, I can find hundreds more if needed.

Tibet was a feudal slave society before integration into the PRC, where slavery was abolished

I come from Ireland and have heard plenty of colonial justifications like this from you imperialists. You think you civilised the savages do you? Nobody asked you to. Your colonial excuses are as ridiculous as Topographica Hibernica from 800 years ago, I've heard them all before.

You have no clue what you're talking about here, and equating Tibet and Xinjiang with Ireland is horrendously insulting to Irish anti-imperialists like James Connolly.

Don't you be trying to warp my history to suit you imperial agenda and keep James Connollys name out of your mouth while you do it. He knew exactly what colonialism was and would recognise and empathise with the struggles of the Uyghur and Tibetan people. Connolly was anti imperialist to the core and has written extensively on the subject. You are tying yourself into knots trying to deny the obvious truth that China is an imperial nation.

China is absolutely Marxist

They are selectively Marxist not absolutely.

purely because they distribute the spoils pilfered from the global south to their labor aristocracy, is laughable.

We haven't even gotten into China's neo colonialism and debt trap diplomacy but I'm sure that you will deny that too. You're a robot programmed to believe "Western imperialism bad, China imperialism good and justified." I am from neither a western or eastern imperial state and I see through all of you. You are just as bad as them but you can't even see it from inside the machine.