The leaders only because China is also an Oligarchy with more than 100 billionaires in their parliament.

Oh, I totally agree with you. It was skinned who brought up this scenario of Russian invading Poland (and possibly Germany) next, I only addressed this scenario to push back against it. Since this scenario is mentioned quite often by various people, I wanted to lay out the arguments against it.




Ukraine has only very small amounts of natural resources compared with Russia. I really don't think that that's the reason. Ferdia, ofthevoid and others see an imminent NATO membership as the casus belli, but I'm not convinced by that explanation either. No country with ongoing wars or territorial disputes can join NATO and this was clearly applying to Ukraine, given the situation in Donbass.

Imho, the only two explanations for Putin's decision to pull the trigger on a full-scale invasion are 1. a revisionist desire to restore former Soviet glory or 2. the desire to prevent the formation of a successful liberal democracy on Russia's doorstep that could ignite the democratic spark in Russia itself.

NATO explanations are too simplistic. sphere of influence seems to be at play here. Putin wants his border to be a buffer from NATO and western ideology, rather than budding hotbeds of western ideology with NATO purchased arms.

the reason he's invading is the same reason NATO allies overthrew and installed a western govt there, its a tug of war on the russian border for influence which will be increasingly important as the petroleum/coal/gas usage of Europe diminishes in the next 100 years.

US is an oligarchy of corporations too if you want to look at it that way, I don't care what the "official" system is
The media coverage and public discourse makes it all a big joke.
When US and West citizens own their own Facebook statuses and private information and are safe from mass surveillance I will listen to lectures about democracy and personal freedoms.

+10 social credit. Still better than being jailed (or being "disapeared") and to have members of your family to lose their jobs or businesses.

If by better, you mean, more effective at mass control and using more insidious means, then I agree
Btw I don't see Chinese evangelizing others about how good and best their system is, that only happens with the totally functional democracies where the biggest public debates is about trans in toilets, your Twitter will be removed if you say the wrong thing, and you get to vote for some dude beholden to some corporation who owns the media you watch.

yes i agree with all of that.


i dont know which country this relates to. Are you referring to Gitmo here ? How many terrorists were there in Gitmo ultimately ? I seem to think it was less then 12 ? and how many innocents in total were housed there ? A real case of hoovering up the sea bed and keeping whatever they got. I always chuckled when I heard americans say "we dont torture people, in america". Yea, they rather do it outside their boarders were its "legal". I think this was such a massive stain on America and it was basically waving a flag to the rest of the world that its OK to torture. We had it in Ireland as well re: IRA / UDA / English Government - we even call them the "disappeared". As commented earlier Russia has now made it a 20 year jail term offense to support Ukraine (sorry correct me now if this statement is not precise) and with regards to China lets not talk about ethnic minorities, that dwarfs anything America did in Gitmo. i.e. state sponsored "terrorism" for want of a better expression is not exclusive to one country.

Ultimately the best way to keep your head above water, in any country, is to have money. a damning statement of society in general.

This post was edited by ferdia on Mar 22 2022 10:20am

if u dont think the chinese think they're superior you're silly.

Chinese are so sucked in on being superior that they actively genocide when you're the wrong kind of Chinese.

asian racial superiority makes even a grand wizard of the KKK look mild.