Xi is not corrupt and does not care about money

I didn’t presume anything I read your replies as you turned yourself inside out whenever anyone had the slightest bad thing to say about America.

Why ask this question when you clearly have decided that China is bad and America is great? If you want to go to America so bad just do it there’s no need to ask inane questions and fight people giving you answers and advice.

You define imperialism as military conquest alone. That renders the term useless. By that logic, every war in history is imperialist. The distinction collapses. Materially, imperialism is the export of capital, the enforcement of unequal exchange, the structural subordination of peripheral economies. That framework explains why the US has 800 military bases globally. Why they can sanction the entire world. Why they support Israel and the constant destabilisation of the periphery.

You claim the Ukrainian people support their current government. Under martial law, with opposition parties banned, media consolidated, dissent criminalized, what does that support actually measure? Polls in a war zone with no free press are not evidence. They are propaganda tools.

You say Russia wants full surrender. That is false. Russia has offered terms: neutrality, demilitarization, recognition of Crimea, self-determination for the Donbas. That is not surrender. That is negotiation. The Donbas has resisted Kyiv since 2014. They have endured shelling, blockade, political erasure. Their preference is not fabricated. It has been tested under fire for nearly a decade. To deny them the right to choose is not solidarity. It is imposition.

You ignored the core of my last message because you have no rebuttal. You cannot refute the NED funding. You cannot explain away the Nulands-Pyatt call. You cannot reconcile your definition of imperialism with the material reality of global capital. You cannot reckon with the fact that US-backed forces shattered Ukrainian sovereignty in 2014, or that fighting to the last Ukrainian for US strategic interests is not in the interest of the average Ukrainian worker. So you retreat to cheap slogans.

If you really stood with the Ukrainian people, you would stand for ending this war. Not prolonging it for US strategic gain. Not fighting to the last Ukrainian. Not sacrificing a generation so Washington can weaken a rival. The position that serves Ukrainian workers is peace, sovereignty, and the right to determine their own future, free from Western patrons. That is the only position that centers human life over geopolitical abstraction.

You call Russia imperialist. Materially, it is not. Imperialism requires export of capital, enforced unequal exchange, subordinated peripheral economies to a core. Russia does not command the IMF. It does not control SWIFT. It does not own global platforms or academic gatekeeping. It is an oligarchic kleptocracy with regional ambitions and security concerns. Conflating it with US hegemony serves Western propaganda.

Also it’s not just the US it’s the imperial core as a whole: Europe, NATO, Five eyes and their vassals like the ROK and Japan.

You said

you are saying this like Russia propaganda machine and hybrid warfare is not multiple times more extensive and pervasive.

to my comment about the NED. Directly bringing up the omparuson of Russian and US hybrid warfare. You claimed Russian operations dwarf American ones. When confronted with the facts of the matter from the NSA to the WMD lie, you pivot to say we are not discussing that. Please at least try stay consistent.

Ukraine deserves sovereignty. Absolutely. But sovereignty is material, not abstract. In 2014, an elected government was removed under threat of violence. The constitutional order broke. US-backed forces took power and immediately positioned Ukraine as a spearhead against Russia. Sovereignty for Ukraine was ended in that moment and it wasn’t by Russian hands.

You call Russia imperialist. Materially, it is not. Imperialism requires export of capital, enforced unequal exchange, subordinated peripheral economies to a core. Russia does not command the IMF. It does not control SWIFT. It does not own global platforms or academic gatekeeping. It is an oligarchic kleptocracy with regional ambitions and security concerns. Conflating it with US hegemony serves Western propaganda.

I stand with the Ukrainian people, not the Banderite government in Kyiv. That government has banned opposition parties, consolidated media control, and committed its population to a war of attrition directed from abroad. Fighting to the last Ukrainian is not liberation. It is sacrifice for US strategic interests.

Since 2014, the population of the Donbas has resisted Kyiv. They have endured shelling, blockade, marginalization. Their preference for association with Russia has been tested under fire for nearly a decade. When this is over they should be given the right to choose who they associate with.

The position that serves Ukrainian workers is not escalation. It is negotiation. It is ending the war, not prolonging it for geopolitical gain. That is not Russian propaganda. That is the only position that centers the lives of the people you claim to support.

This argument rests on a false equivalence that collapses fundamentally different material relations into the same category. Loans, energy agreements, and diplomatic engagement with a neighboring state, however one judges Moscow’s intentions, are sovereign economic transactions operating in the realm of interstate relations. What the NED, USAID, and affiliated NGOs executed in Ukraine was something else entirely: a long-term, coordinated program to infiltrate civil society, capture media infrastructure, and mobilize ethnic divisions toward regime change.

You cite a Google Books snippet and a Guardian article as if they settle the matter. But that Guardian piece simply repeats State Department claims without independent verification, without naming sources, without contextualizing the declassified cable’s purpose. That’s not analysis. That’s amplification. When US intelligence says Russia spent hundreds of millions to influence officials, it’s important to ask: influence how? Through what mechanisms? With what evidence? And while we’re asking, where is the equivalent scrutiny of the millions to billions the NED and other cutout NGOs funneled directly into opposition groups, media outlets, and digital mobilization tools globally?

Let’s talk scale. You want to compare Russia’s hybrid warfare to the West’s? Open the Snowden documents. Look at Tailored Access Operations, the NSA’s elite unit for infiltrating foreign networks, hardware, and infrastructure. Recall Eternal Blue, the exploit the NSA developed, lost control of, and which later powered WannaCry(one of if not the largest ransomware attack in history) and more. Remember Stuxnet, the joint US-Israeli cyberweapon that physically destroyed Iranian centrifuges, a precedent for offensive cyber operations against sovereign states. These are documented capabilities, deployed globally, under a command structure that answers to no international body. Add Five Eyes: a transnational intelligence alliance with unparalleled signals intelligence reach, sharing raw data, coordinating disinformation, and shielding each other from accountability. Assange and Snowden were targeted for revealing this architecture. Russia’s media outreach, however aggressive, does not operate at this level of technical penetration, global integration, or institutional impunity.

Then there’s the propaganda machinery. The Nayirah testimony, fabricated by Hill & Knowlton and funded by the Kuwaiti government, was aired before Congress to manufacture consent for Gulf War I. The WMD lies, repeated across every major Western outlet, were used to justify invasion, occupation, and the destruction of a sovereign state. These weren’t fringe operations. They were central, coordinated, and successful. They reveal a system where intelligence, media, and political power fuse to produce narrative as weapon. To claim Russia’s apparatus surpasses this ignores the material base of Western ideological production: ownership of global platforms, control of financial messaging, dominance of academic and think-tank ecosystems. Russia rents space in that system. The West owns the building.

On Euromaidan itself: spontaneous protests don’t receive sustained, pre-planned funding from foreign government-linked foundations. They don’t feature trained organizers, pre-positioned media teams, and real-time social media amplification calibrated to escalate tension along ethnic lines. The leaked Nulands-Pyatt call was a glimpse of the coordination. And the return to democratic elections you cite occurred after a constitutional rupture, after an elected president fled under threat of violence, after parliament was reconstituted under duress, after the legal order was suspended. OSCE monitoring a vote does not retroactively legitimize the process that produced it. Legitimacy isn’t procedural alone. It’s material. It’s about who holds power, how they got it, and whose interests that power serves.

Then there’s the Donbas, the post-coup government’s first legislative acts included rolling back language protections for Russian speakers. And the response, armed resistance, Russian support, the descent into conflict, was foreseeable (predicted even as the coup in Ukraine to use them as the tip of the spear against Russia was entirely the point). To frame this as purely Russian aggression erases the internal fractures that external intervention exploited. That erasure serves a purpose. It simplifies a complex class and national question into a moral fable which is simply a fairytale.

Playing a part in Ukraine’s “color revolution.” During the 2004 Orange Revolution, NED provided US$65 million to the Ukrainian opposition. Between 2007 and 2015, NED allocated more than US$30 million to support Ukrainian NGOs and promote “civic participation.” During the 2013-2014 Euromaidan, NED financed the Mass Media Institute to spread inflammatory information. NED also spent tens of millions of dollars in the use of such social media platforms as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram to spread disinformation, heighten ethnic tensions in Ukraine, and stir up ethnic antagonism in eastern Ukraine.

The National Endowment for Democracy:What It Is and What It Does

Protests work. History shows mass action forces change. This event however is not a protest. It is a parade. Parades (like other events BBQs, picnics etc.) have their place for morale and recruitment but they are not political weapons. Confusing spectacle with action harms the movement.

Real protest needs specific actionable goals. It needs a strategy for disruption that hits capital where it hurts. It needs a plan for escalation when ignored. It requires a solid organized base ready to act. This event has none of these. No Kings is not a demand. It is a slogan without a material target (and even if it was the fact it drops the kings label in countries that retain a monarchy really is kneecapping itself).

Contacting congresspeople accepts the bourgeois state as the solution. They serve capital. Begging them for change is a dead end. Permits mean the state approved your dissent. That is managed opposition. There is use here though. Meeting organizers builds networks and recruiting is possible. But calling this a protest pretends action is happening when it is not. It funnels revolutionary sentiment into harmless spectacle. It dissipates energy rather than concentrating it. Do not mistake spectacle for struggle.

Iran was running soviet hand me downs and equivalents, their air force and navy were never core to their military strategy. Drones, missiles etc are the core and it’s clearly working.

The fact is that the US spends nearly a trillion a year on its military (more than the next 10 countries combined) and built it’s image on being “THE” military superpower yet they are having their toys destroyed in massive cost loss conversions.

Why do you feel the need to lick US boots beyond being deeply chauvinist internally. The US clearly has no real goal in this war, it’s shifted from nebulous “regime change” (which worked out so well every other time) to opening the straight that was already open before this idiotic war.

Why is it so hard for you to admit that this is an idiotic war, a comedy of errors pushed forward by an inflated military budget and a false sense of invincibility. They have lost/spent roughly $61billion already increasing around $1billion a day, and what do they have to show for it? Destroying an air force and navy that wasn’t worth anything already? An Iranian populace now more radicalised than ever against them? An energy crisis threatening to topple the petrodollar?

You really should come down to reality sometimes if you manage to remove your tongue from the US’s sphincter. Iran could still absolutely be toppled but to act like to this point it hasn’t been a serious contender for fractions of a cent on the dollar spent, or that the US hasn’t been bumbling it’s way through losing well over a billion in advanced weapons platforms is ridiculous and completely detached from reality.

“Repairing” major aircraft isn’t like fixing a dent on a sedan. A single nick in a critical zone triggers full disassembly, part-by-part inspection, and replacement. Five KC-135s took direct hits from explosives. That they aren’t “dust” is irrelevant. Structural integrity is compromised. Return to service means months or more of labor, scarce parts, and diverted maintenance capacity as they are fully dismantled, inspected and then possibly repaired.

Then there’s the cost exchange. Iranian ballistic missiles run roughly $1-2 million to produce. A KC-135 is ~$80 million adjusted for inflation. Five tankers is ~$400 million in assets, not counting wasted crew training during operational downtime and the repair costs. When one side trades cheap, mass-produced munitions for high-value, hard-to-replace platforms, that’s clearly valuable.

And let’s be real about US “competence.” They lost a $1.1 billion radar to a Shahed drone. A Black Hawk and an advanced anti-drone radar taken out by FPV strikes. The Strait closed while they scrambled. An F-35 forced back for repairs after taking a hit from an old IR-tube missile. This campaign has been a comedy of errors.

Iran isn’t full of military geniuses. But they’re showing clear competency: splitting command into cells to blunt decapitation strikes, prioritizing radar and C4ISR first, then shifting to high-value enablers like tankers. They understand the material conditions. The US is learning, expensively once again, that overwhelming cost and complexity is a vulnerability.

Also authoritarian is meaningless pejorative.

Because giant stationary targets are much better.

Childish.

You cannot even graciously admit you were wrong. You have to make another bs claim pulled straight from your ass and cover it in sarcasm. “Minimal colonial benefit” defined by an arbitrary GDP percentage you just invented.

This was never about winning or losing. I was hoping that from exposure you might decide to do some research instead of spreading colonial apologism and “smarter Europe” nonsense that borders on race science.

Genuinely, if you just take the time to read the works I recommended and apply a proper analysis to history, you will be much more informed. Less likely to be embarrassed. Less likely to lash out when basic facts are corrected.

I wish you the best in growing up and finishing your education. Hopefully it broadens your horizons.

CONTEXT: Germany 1880, trying to establishing the relevance to national wealth of rubber imported from colonies.

Moving the goalposts is not context. It is deflection. Your original claim was that Germany industrialized without colonial benefit. That is false. The global system Germany operated within was structured by colonial extraction. Even if rubber was “0.2% of GDP” (which is again straight from your ass), it still spectacularly misses the point being made. Capital accumulation is not about raw input percentages. It is about super-profits, protected markets, financial infrastructure, and reinvestment capacity. Colonial trade provided all of that. Isolating one commodity used as an example to dismiss the system is not the dunk you seem to think it is.

Global production is 11K tons, almost entirely from the Empire of Brazil, not a colony of a European country

Brazil in 1880 was not “not a colony”. It was a semi-colonial economy, formerly Portuguese, integrated into the British imperial economic sphere. Informal empire counts. The cotton, rubber, and minerals that fed European industry came from conditions of unequal exchange. Prices set in London. Shipping controlled by British firms. Contracts enforced by gunboats. That is the material relation. To pretend that “not a formal colony” means “not extraction” is to ignore how imperialism and colonialism actually works.

Europe was not a thing. Shipping insurance was a thing since medieval age.

No one said “Europe” was a unified state. The point was that German capital operated within a European imperial circuit. British shipping, Lloyd’s insurance, French ports, German industrial demand: all part of the same extraction-based system. To isolate “national” banks from that circuit is methodological nationalism. It ignores how capital actually moves. Deutsche Bank financed foreign trade. German firms used British insurance. German goods moved on British ships. That is not “irrelevant”. That is the system.

The only mineral not from a European country in your list was tin. Germany had tin deposits on the border with Bohemia, but most of the Tin was from Cornwall.

Cornwall was embedded in the British imperial mining complex. Its profits relied on colonial capital, colonial technology, and colonial markets. The same goes for Spanish iron, Swedish copper, Bohemian manganese. These were not isolated national industries. They operated within a European extractive circuit built on colonial power. Cheap labor from the periphery kept input costs down. Colonial infrastructure lowered shipping costs. Imperial finance provided the credit. That is how European mining stayed profitable.

Germany directly benefited from access to these mines. German steel used Spanish iron. German machinery used Swedish copper. German industry used Cornish tin. The prices, the availability, the reliability of supply, all shaped by imperial relations. To treat these as “just European” inputs is to ignore the global division of labor that made them cheap and accessible. Germany did not need its own colonies to benefit from colonial extraction. It just needed to participate in the system. And it did.

You keep isolating variables to avoid the systemic argument. One commodity. One year. One border. That is cherry-picking to protect a preconceived conclusion.

At this point, continuing is futile. You have shown you will move the goalposts, dismiss facts that inconvenience you, and lash out when basic history is corrected. If you are not willing to engage the argument in good faith, there is no point in further comments.

TL;DR baby’s first dialectical and historical materialist breakdown: Germany in 1880 did not industrialize in a vacuum. It operated within a global capitalist system structured by colonial extraction. Raw materials from the periphery (cotton, rubber, minerals) fed German industry at prices shaped by imperial power. Protected colonial markets absorbed German exports. European finance, shipping, and insurance networks built on extraction facilitated German trade. Super-profits from the colonial system funded reinvestment and innovation in the core. Germany benefited from this system even before it had direct colonies. It helped sustain the system through demand, finance, and participation in the imperial circuit. That is how the material relations worked.

Also ai badjacketing me because you can’t make a coherent point is cringe and you should grow up. The fact you talk so arrogantly on a topic you are so woefully uneducated about is embarrassing and honestly you should be embarrassed, but that’s a good thing. You should channel this embarrassment I hope you feel into learning before speaking to avoid it in the future.

Wow, very hostile. Honestly not unexpected after getting caught on some pretty bald-faced lies.

Rubber was not a thing in 1880

Shipping insurance wasn’t a thing in 1880

Germany didn’t import minerals or agricultural supplies

You went from denying rubber existed in 1880 to conceding it was “0.2% of GDP” in one message (not to mind 0.2% is a number pulled directly from your ass alongside being irrelevant to the point). You went from “European banks and shipping insurance wasn’t a thing” to “Deutsche Bank is a national bank” like that refutes anything.

I’d be embarrassed too don’t worry I don’t hold it against you.

However after all this, you still have not engaged the core point: Germany and Italy were integrated into the imperial core even before they had direct colonies. Capital, trade, finance, shipping, insurance, markets, all structured by colonial extraction. It’s really not that complicated. It is basic historical materialism.

The fact that you cannot grasp a systemic analysis, and instead lash out when basic facts are corrected, tells me everything I need to know. Seems I hit the nail on the head as they say (bullseye). 🤣

In 1880 Germany was mostly self sufficient in generating capital from traditional industries

Self-sufficiency is a myth in a global capitalist system. German agriculture in 1880 relied on imported guano, nitrates, and machinery. German industry relied on imported cotton, rubber, and minerals. You cannot isolate a national economy from the world market that sustains it.

You continue to lie about “European banks, shipping, insurance” like this was a thing in 1880.

Deutsche Bank was founded in 1870 specifically to finance German foreign trade. Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank were active in colonial finance by the 1880s. Lloyd’s of London insured German shipments. British and French shipping lines carried German goods. Capital was never purely national. That is not a lie. That is history.

Rubber (not a thing in 1880)

Rubber was absolutely a thing in 1880. The Congo rubber boom began in the early 1880s. The Amazon rubber boom was in full swing. German chemical firms like BASF and Bayer were already importing rubber for industrial use. Natural rubber was critical for insulation, tires, and machinery. To deny this is to ignore basic industrial history.

Mineral (which one exactly?)

Iron ore from Sweden and Spain. Manganese from Russia and Brazil. Copper from Chile and the US. Tin from Southeast Asia. German steel production depended on imported inputs. Colonial and semi-colonial sources supplied those inputs under conditions of unequal exchange. That is the material relation.

while they had problems with slavery, that was not the result of colonial exploitation, but access to market.

Slavery in the US South was colonial exploitation. The cotton that fed Lancashire and the Ruhr was produced by enslaved labor. That is not “access to market.” That is extraction. To separate the two is idealism.

The hegemon in 1880 was the British Empire […] Germany was actually against the British world order

Rivalry within the core does not negate shared benefit from the periphery. Germany challenged British hegemony precisely because it wanted a larger share of colonial extraction. That is not evidence against the system. That is evidence of how the system works.

colonial empire was a massive net financial loss

Debated in historiography. Even if true for some accounting metrics, it ignores strategic benefits: resource access, market control, geopolitical leverage, technological spin-offs. Capital accumulation is not just about balance sheets. It is about power.

China that has implicit procurement […] conditions on loans

Yes. Chinese loans have conditions. But they do not typically demand privatization, austerity, or deregulation. They do not restructure domestic policy to serve foreign capital. That is a material difference. Not perfection. Not innocence. But difference. Conflating mechanism with outcome is bad analysis.

you repeating the same lies is so tiring that makes me think those books are not that good

You don’t think rubber was a thing in the 1880s. You think Germany was self-sufficient in a global capitalist system. You think buying cotton from slave plantations is just “market access.” You think core-periphery relations are optional.

I am going to ask this earnestly please don’t be offended: are you by chance a German teenager? It would explain the constant attempts to whitewash German imperial history and the extreme gaps in basic historical knowledge.

If not (and honestly even if you are), then please just read the fucking books. Eric Williams. Walter Rodney. Kwame Nkrumah. Samir Amin. Aimé Césaire. CLR James. Frantz Fanon.

I set the date as 1880 multiple times exactly because both Italy and Germany were among the richest countries in the world by that date without a colonial empire.

Precision that misses the point is not precision. Capital does not accumulate in national silos. German and Italian industry in 1880 was embedded in a European imperial circuit. British and French colonies supplied cheap cotton, rubber, minerals. Those inputs lowered production costs for German and Italian manufacturers. Colonial markets absorbed their exports. European banks, shipping, insurance, and legal frameworks (all built on extraction) facilitated their trade. To isolate “1880 Germany” from that system is methodological nationalism. It ignores how capital actually moves.

If market access is enough of a benefit to be part of the exploitation system, that means that China and India which are also benefitting from global market access and capital, are part of the system of colonial exploitation.

False equivalence. China and India are not shaping the rules of the global market. They are operating within a system designed by and for Western capital. The IMF, World Bank, WTO, SWIFT, dollar hegemony, these are not neutral platforms. They are instruments of core power. China is building parallel structures precisely because the existing ones are rigged. That is not the same as being a beneficiary of the original extraction that built those structures.

Germany in 1880 was part of the core that designed and enforced the colonial order. China in 2026 is challenging that order. Materially different positions. Conflating them is either confusion or bad faith.

does EU lending program for Africa? Not to my knowledge. Do you have some data that justify this?

Yes. EU development aid is tied to procurement from European firms. The Cotonou Agreement, the Global Gateway initiative, the European Development Fund, all come with conditionalities on governance, trade liberalization, and policy alignment. The European Investment Bank requires environmental and social standards that often favor European contractors. These are not “anti-corruption” in the abstract. They are mechanisms that reproduce dependency and open markets for European capital.

You do not need to take my word. Read the policy documents. Or better, read the critics who have analyzed their outcomes.

Stop dodging. Stop deflecting. Stop pretending that isolating one variable in 1880 explains a global system of accumulation.

Read the fucking books. Eric Williams. Walter Rodney. Kwame Nkrumah. Samir Amin. Aimé Césaire. CLR James. Frantz Fanon. Not to argue. To understand how the world actually works.

I know reading is hard but you barely have a grasp on what you’re talking about while you speak with such authority.

Britain and Belgium are brutal example of growth driven by colonial exploitation. Germany and Italy are not.

We really are going in circles.

Germany and Italy did not exist in a vacuum. They operated inside an integrated European imperial system. German banks financed colonial ventures in Africa. German firms sold manufactured goods into markets protected by British and French guns. German industry ran on rubber, cotton, and minerals extracted under colonial conditions. That “open market” was not neutral. It was structured by colonial power relations that set prices, controlled shipping, and enforced contracts through gunboats. Buying raw materials from a colony means benefiting from the exploitation that produced them.

And Germany had the third largest colonial empire in the 19th century, behind only Britain and France. Lost those holdings after WW1, but the benefit remained. Italy held the AOI and other territories until 1941. No direct colonies at a given moment does not mean no colonial benefit. The core-periphery relation is systemic.

Finally, I do not understand why you give China a pass.

I am not giving anyone a pass. I am analyzing material differences in mechanism.

Chinese investment does not come with structural adjustment programs. No demands for privatization, austerity, or deregulation. No regime change tied to loans. Debt renegotiations happen without military intervention. Infrastructure-for-resources deals at least build physical capital in the host country. That is a material difference from Western lending frameworks.

The “One China” principle is about territorial sovereignty, not extraction. The policy is no more colonial than the US federal government defeating the Confederacy.

EU conditionalities like “anti-corruption” or “green transition” often function to open markets for European firms, enforce neoliberal reforms, and maintain dependency.

When China force the “No Paris Club”, and tied procurement clauses (no skill transfer and no job creation) it is fine

The Paris Club is a Western creditor cartel that enforces repayment on terms favorable to core capital. Chinese lending may have tough terms at times, but it does not demand political restructuring to serve foreign capital interests.

Tied procurement is not unique to China. Western aid and investment do the same. The difference is in the superstructure: Western conditionalities reshape domestic policy. Chinese contracts are bilateral and commercial. Not perfect. But not identical.

You are conflating all foreign capital as the same. That ignores how power actually operates. Mechanism and outcome matter.

Please actually engage. Stop the circular deflection. So much of this misunderstanding and malformed analysis, (if it’s not simply bad faith debate-bro bullshit) would clear up if you took the time to read the seminal works of the authors I recommended.

Can you provide factual evidence that is necessarily the case and not something that happen sometimes?

Ok again for the 3rd time:

Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery: profits from the transatlantic slave trade directly financed British industrialization. Textile mills, the leading sector of the Industrial Revolution, ran on cotton produced by enslaved labor in the US South and Caribbean. That is not “sometimes.” That is the foundation.

Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa: documents how colonial infrastructure was built to extract, not develop. Railways went from mines to ports, not between African cities. Capital flowed out. Profits repatriated. Local industry stifled.

The Belgian Congo: rubber and mineral extraction under Leopold II generated massive surplus. That surplus funded Belgian industry, public works, financial institutions. Same pattern across French West Africa, Portuguese Angola, British India.

Capital accumulation is not just about raw input percentages. It is about profit rates, reinvestment capacity, market control, financial infrastructure. Colonial trade provided protected markets for European manufactures. It supplied cheap inputs. It generated super-profits that funded further innovation. That is how the system worked. Please actually engage with what I’m saying and the books I am recommending.

I am saying that the cumulation environmental, cultural and historical events made it so in that moment in time they made choices we now consider smart

But those “choices” were materially conditioned. You cannot separate “innovation” from the capital that funded it. That capital came from extraction. To credit “smart choices” while ignoring the material basis of those choices is idealism. It is the same logic that says a factory owner is “smart” for getting rich while ignoring the workers who produced the value.

Major example of this is Elon Musk, by all accounts a complete fucking idiot, yet thanks to his parents apartheid mine he had the material basis to reach where he is now. Remove that foundation and all his “genius” disappears, same with the EuroAmerikan hegemony.

Why are you fighting me on opinion we share already?

Because you are not sharing the opinion. You said colonialism is a consequence of being richer, not a driver. That reverses cause and effect. You equated Chinese investment with Western neocolonialism, ignoring the material difference in mechanism. You framed “tolerating abuse” as distinct from support, ignoring how benefit constitutes complicity.

If we actually shared the analysis, you would not be defending the “smarter Europe” framing. You would not be asking for evidence after I already recommended multiple books that cover these points in far more detail than I can in a comment.

Read the sources like I said last comment.