would you condemn seemingly imperialist behaviour from countries like Russia and China as much as you would condemn imperialist behaviour from western countries

The only example you produced of China’s “imperialism” was settling some uninhabited islands in the Pacific. Compare that to the unprovoked invasion and decades long occupation of Afghanistan, and the comparison is obviously spurious and if that’s really your position then you’re obviously trolling and can be dismissed without further comment.

Surely we should hold every country to consistent standards.

I don’t actually agree with that, for a number of reasons, some of which I’ve already expressed: you should of course hold your own country to a higher standard than any other country, because you have a greater responsibility for how it behaves.

On top of that, I’m also partial to Lenin’s arguments for “revolutionary defeatism”. Let me explain.

Before the first world war, a bunch of socialists and social democrats got together in the Second International, and they issued a statement called the Basel Declaration. The Basel Declaration warned of the looming conflict, and expressed that, should socialists fail to prevent it, they should use the opportunity to launch a global revolution - ideally, the threat of revolution would be a deterrent that would prevent the war in the first place.

But the war happened anyway, and the revolution did not materialize, at least not I’m Britain, France, or Germany. In fact, the social democrats of each country, who had previously agreed in principle to that course of action, all suddenly found reasons to rally around their respective flags and support the war effort. The British social democrats pointed to Germany’s more autocratic system, while the German social democrats pointed to Russia’s serfdom, and so on. Or they said, all sides are bad, and we’re not trying to win or conquer anybody, we’re just fighting “against defeat.” And so they all kept killing each other, and countless lives were lost for no good reason.

Lenin, however, argued that, in that situation, the proper response is for the socialists of each country to be primarily opposed to their own respective countries, to advocate for their own country’s defeat. I cite him here because he expresses it much better that I could:

On closer examination, this slogan [“neither victory nor defeat”] will be found to mean a “class truce”, the renunciation of the class struggle by the oppressed classes in all belligerent countries, since the class struggle is impossible without dealing blows at one’s “own” bourgeoisie, one’s “own” government, whereas dealing a blow at one’s own government in wartime is (for Bukvoyed’s information) high treason, means contributing to the defeat of one’s own country. Those who accept the “neither victory-nor-defeat” slogan can only be hypocritically in favour of the class struggle, of “disrupting the class truce”; in practice, such people are renouncing an independent proletarian policy because they subordinate the proletariat of all belligerent countries to the absolutely bourgeois task of safeguarding the imperialist governments against defeat. The only policy of actual, not verbal disruption of the “class truce”, of acceptance of the class struggle, is for the proletariat to take advantage of the difficulties experienced by its government and its bourgeoisie in order to overthrow them. This, however, cannot be achieved or striven for, without desiring the defeat of one’s own government and without contributing to that defeat.

When, before the war, the Italian Social-Democrats raised the question of a mass strike, the bourgeoisie replied, no doubt correctly from their own point of view, that this would be high treason, and that Social-Democrats would be dealt with as traitors. That is true, just as it is true that fraternisation in the trenches is high treason. Those who write against “high treason”, as Bukvoyed does, or against the “disintegration of Russia”, as Semkovsky does, are adopting the bourgeois, not the proletarian point of view. A proletarian cannot deal a class blow at his government or hold out (in fact) a hand to his brother, the proletarian of the “foreign” country which is at war with “our side”, without committing “high treason”, without contributing to the defeat, to the disintegration of his “own”, imperialist “Great” Power.

Whoever is in favour of the slogan of “neither victory nor defeat” is consciously or unconsciously a chauvinist; at best he is a conciliatory petty bourgeois but in any case he is an enemy to proletarian policy, a partisan of the existing governments, of the present-day ruling classes.

To put it another way, the most important conflict is class conflict, and my most immediate enemy is the ruling class of my own country. Even if the ruling class of another country is just as bad, or even marginally worse, that’s a bridge to be crossed later.

Once our own rulers have been justly tried but a revolutionary tribunal and received whatever punishment is deemed appropriate for hundreds of thousands of counts of murder, then after that we can deal with Putin next. Not before.

I can accept that the documents are real, and I can accept that China’s handling of the situation was problematic. As I said, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that information. The only means I see of myself influencing China’s actions is through my government, and I should probably focus on trying to influence my government to stop abducting people to secret prisons themselves before I worry about influencing them to pressure China about it’s problems.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the Uighur people. Happy? I can waggle my finger at China, if you like, perhaps I can even write a letter to Xi Jinping about it. That all seems rather meaningless to me.

I’m more of a solution-oriented person. Genuinely, not just here, but in my personal life, I don’t really see the point in playing the blame game. Tell me how anything I do or don’t do is supposed to improve the treatment of Uighurs, and I’ll consider it. But I’m not really interested in playing St. Peter and saying which countries are good or bad and who deserves to go to heaven or hell. When I criticize the US, it’s because I’m trying to change the US. Unless you can either provide a mechanism for me to influence China without the US government, or are willing to argue that I should support the US against China, then I don’t see why I should care, or why you should care whether I care.

There are also the allegations of rape

What is your opinion of Tara Reade?

Two of the examples I listed involved the NYT and the BBC cynically exploiting their readers’ willingness to believe claims of sexual assault to advance their own agendas. If you give the imperialist propagandists any way to circumvent the normal process of skepticism and critical evaluation of evidence, they will use it.

I’d be more than happy to air the dirty laundry of those two gossip rags. But before I do, I object to your framing of the issue. Hearsay is hearsay, and the chain of proof is only as strong as it’s weakest link. If the NYT says Adrian Zenz says something, then I’ll readily accept that he said it, but not that what he said has any credibility since he’s a crackpot. Under no circumstances should any source be treated as dogma no matter how reliable it is (not that the NYT or BBC are at all reliable). Fact checking isn’t about finding somebody who “seems trustworthy” who said it, it’s about actually examining the physical evidence - otherwise what you’re doing is not really any different than someone believing something because their aunt said it on Facebook.

I don’t consider either source at all reliable, especially not when it comes to China. Even if they were, it wouldn’t matter - any claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Now, having said all that - you said you didn’t use the term “genocide.” That makes your argument much stronger, because you’re not necessarily relying on the more extreme and unfounded claims that have been pushed by those garbage sources. There are somewhat more credible sources that make more grounded criticism alleging human rights abuses, and we can have a conversation on those terms if you like.

However, I do have to question why it is so important for me to be invested in that situation at all. As an American, I can’t really do anything about it, and there are all kinds of human rights abuses occurring at home that are more pressing. Why look at the splinter in their eye rather than the board in my own? I don’t uphold China as some shining beacon that everyone else should emulate, I just push back against exaggerated claims about it. And I’ve caught bans before around here for “genocide denial” just for asking for evidence regarding it and saying that Zenz isn’t a credible source, so forgive me if my attitude regarding the subject is somewhat defensive.

Anonymous interviews are part of journalism.

Do you condemn the ongoing US genocide of Italians? I, as an anonymous source living in the US, witnessed a bunch of soldiers rounding up people and demanding to know if any of them were Italian and anybody who raised their hand was executed by drawn and quartering.

If you don’t accept that this is happening based on my testimony, you’re a genocide supporter. Why do you hate Italians?

“The Last Days” for Mount & Blade. Intro

Mount & Blade was a medieval combat simulator where you’re a wandering mercenary in a war torn region. The gameplay was somewhat innovative when it came out (originally 2008), but as far as story and setting, it was kinda meh. But the great thing about it were the mods, and by far the best mod was “The Last Days,” a total conversion mod that lifted all the mechanics but put it in The Lord of the Rings.

These nerds put so much detail into that mod, it was incredible. I didn’t know half the factions existed. The map goes beyond Gondor and Rohan and even Rivendell, it goes all the way out to the goblins of Mt. Gundabad fighting against the men of Dale. Each location has tons of detail, some of them are truly massive, and they pushed the limits of the base game with trolls and giant spiders and things like that. Each individual faction has their own faction strength, so you have to think strategically about where to reinforce. The differences between how each factions’ units fight on the battlefield is more emphasized, and tbh the combat is a bit better balanced.

It really hit the nail on the head of what to do with the game engine, and then put real passion, creativity, and effort into making it work (seriously, the last update was in 2017, new stuff was being added after nearly a decade. And there’s comments on the page I linked as recently as 10 days ago, so people are still playing it). Next to it, the base game feels a bit more like a proof of concept. The open world nature of the game really allows you to take in the setting and experience the story from a different perspective, rather than following the heroes from the books. It really made the setting come alive in a way I haven’t found in really any other LotR game (although I’m not super into the setting and haven’t played a ton of them).

The mod was for the original game at first but it update when they put out the sequel, Mount & Blade: Warband, so if anyone decides to check it out, get that one rather than the original.

Sounds like a convenient excuse to just abandon any standards of evidence whatsoever, as is happening here.

If you can’t provide any evidence whatsoever that a person or group says something, and they reject that characterization of their beliefs, then why should anyone believe a word of what you’re saying?

Oh right, because of the power of tribalism. Gotta agree with all the bullshit or you won’t be accepted into the in-group. Which is the actual “same game MAGA plays.” The anti-intellectualism, tribalism, and lies are right out of their playbook. We can’t really get through your wall of misinformation for the exact same reasons that you can’t get through MAGA’s misinformation, because on a certain level, you don’t even care if the things you’re saying are true or not.

I don’t lie and spread rumors like y’all do. When I say something, I have the receipts. No projection here.

It’s a mild exaggeration. I sometimes talk about things happening on the fediverse without providing a link, but the difference is, if I’m asked for a link, I can provide one. It isn’t difficult to use the search function, especially if my memory of a conversation is reliable.

In any case, it’s always best to assume the person is lying if they say something about their opponents’ views that they can’t actually back up. Like, I could say that I had some half-remembered conversation with somebody where they said they like to torture puppies. If you read that, it shouldn’t go into the “maybe” column, it should do into the “false” column. It’s false until it’s validated with evidence, and that’s especially true when evidence should be easy to provide.

If you treat it as anything but an outright lie, that promotes a culture of making stuff up, because bad actors are fine with getting people to think their opponents “might” torture puppies, and they won’t get called out in that culture. This is how you get crybullies.

In any case, even if it isn’t an outright lie or bad faith, you can’t rely on people’s memories. Hell, a lot of the time, a person couldn’t even accurately restate the other person’s position during an argument.

I’ve said this line dozens of times btw (and it’s in my profile). I don’t recall ever being proven wrong, they never have the receipts.

Serious answer:

Every proletarian has been through strikes and has experienced “compromises” with the hated oppressors and exploiters, when the workers have had to return to work either without having achieved anything or else agreeing to only a partial satisfaction of their demands. Every proletarian—as a result of the conditions of the mass struggle and the acute intensification of class antagonisms he lives among—sees the difference between a compromise enforced by objective conditions (such as lack of strike funds, no outside support, starvation and exhaustion)—a compromise which in no way minimizes the revolutionary devotion and readiness to carry on the struggle on the part of the workers who have agreed to such a compromise—and, on the other hand, a compromise by traitors who try to ascribe to objective causes their self-interest (strike-breakers also enter into “compromises”!), their cowardice, desire to toady to the capitalists, and readiness to yield to intimidation, sometimes to persuasion, sometimes to sops, and sometimes to flattery from the capitalists.

-“No Compromises?” Lenin.

In other words, you can’t really say that compromise in general is good or bad. It depends on the specifics of the situation. There are plenty of cases where compromise is the best way to advance one’s interests, but if you commit to one path or the other, you’re showing your hand too early. If the party you’re negotiating with knows ahead of time that you’re committed to compromising, then they’re not going to offer very much to do it, but if you never accept compromise, then you may miss out on a mutually beneficial arrangement.

There are historical examples where compromise was necessary, but there have also been cases where it wasn’t. If you’re going to take a position that says compromise is generally preferable, I’d ask whether that includes, for example, trying to find a compromise with Russia over Ukraine. Because it seems like the same people who say that the left has to compromise and sacrifice every demand will also call for fighting to the last Ukrainian and not giving up an inch of territory. That makes me think that it’s less about whether compromise is good or bad, and more about what we consider worth fighting for and what points we see as negotiable.

“Marx and Engles weren’t leftists” ok.

Hey look everyone! It’s multiple users who can’t provide any examples to validate the rumors they’re spreading about people they dislike!

“China is right in killing the Uigures”

If someone says something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they’re lying.

I helped to get them elected but they still lost. What about that are you confused about?

Makes more sense when you look at it from the perspective of class.

Kiseido Go Server (KGS)

If KGS’s UI looks like it hasn’t been updated in 20 years, that’s because it’s already perfect. There’s no ads, it’s purely functional, it does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. If you click on “KGS Plus” you have the option to spend money on lectures given by human pros. Otherwise it’s completely free, and it’s still an active go server that’s been around forever.

Your reading comprehension needs work.

What?

Go watch Dr. Strangelove.

its own little transphobic bubble with lemmygrad and hexbear.

Lmao

The world bank? My person they are quoting the Chinese propaganda.

I see. So The World Bank is also in on the communist plot to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.

The west had lots of stuff after ww2, they got more cheaper stuff when they offshored it to China that’s the coherent argument

“You only made a bunch of money because you produced stuff people wanted to buy” is not the own you think it is.

Me, I’m not on anybody’s payroll. But I’m trying to be. Once I build up my modlog enough as a freelancer, the plan is to print it out and mail it to the nearest Chinese embassy so I can finally quit my day job.