Your description of the conditions is correct but your conclusion is a non-sequitur. It does not follow logically that the only or best option to stop those atrocities was to mass murder civilians. Despite what the propaganda about the bombings that has since been inculcated into the western public claims, they were not in fact necessary for compelling Japan's surrender. There were already internal disputes about this in the Japanese leadership for some time, but after their decisive defeat in Manchuria at the hands of the Red Army the decision to surrender as soon as possible became pretty much unanimous. Every day that went by was another day that the Soviets took more territory and came closer and closer - through the Kurils - to the Japanese home islands. The Japanese imperialists knew just as well as the Nazis that they stood a much better chance of avoiding punishment for their crimes (and some of them even being allowed to retain some power in the post war state) if they surrendered to the US rather than the USSR. Moreover we now know that the US leaders knew this. Their primary motivations were to have a live weapons test and to intimidate the Soviet Union.

Doesn't prove anything except that if the CIA (or more likely the MI6 and the SBU) did have a hand in it they were outplayed. If the Kremlin and Russian society in general had reacted differently the West could easily have gotten its wish for bloodshed fulfilled. A more insecure government may have reflexively resorted to immediate use of force.

It is an interesting thought experiment for instance to think about how the US government would have reacted if ten thousand Blackwater mercenaries armed with heavy military equipment took over Boston and were rolling down the highway towards Washington demanding the resignation of the Secretary of Defense and top Pentagon generals.

No, absolutely not. That is a completely false propaganda narrative that has been fabricated specifically in order to fool gullible western leftists (radlibs and ultras especially) into not supporting one of the biggest and still among the most active and politically vital communist parties in the world today. It's no different from the narrative which claims that the PRC has turned capitalist and is therefore not deserving of the anti-capitalist left's support.

We see this exact same trick being played on western leftists with virtually every politically relevant communist or socialist party in the global south. They all get painted as "fake communists", "revisionist", "nationalist" or any number of other excuses to get well meaning but ignorant and misinformed leftists in the imperial core to become totally nihilistic and demoralized and only support the most fringe and insignificant groups that have no real world impact. Unfortunately it seems to have worked.

Mind you, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is not perfect and there are definitely some positions they have taken which they deserve to be criticized for, but they are effectively the only real opposition to Putin that exists in Russia. All the rest, the so-called "liberal opposition" are overwhelmingly astroturfed with very little organic support in Russia and mostly propped up by western and western-affiliated NGOs and money from western intelligence cutouts like the NED.

Weapons grade cringe. Hard to believe how these people can be so eager for civil war and the complete breakdown of order in their society while their country is in an existential conflict with a literal fascist state and the entire imperialist West behind it. But of course we know from history that anarchists have this tendency, as even while the Bolsheviks were busy defending the newly established Soviet state against the white reaction and the imperialist intervention forces, anarchists were doing their best to sabotage them every way.

Also, lol at the idea of defending against Wagner and/or state forces' tanks and artillery with "solidarity and mutual aid". Sure buddy... Are we sure these are adults and not children writing this? Or have they just been bought off by the CIA? Luckily these people are tiny and fringe groups that will never amount to anything.

It becomes immediately obvious why the Russian people don't take anarchists seriously. Compare this nonsense to the much more mature and sensible statement put out by the Communist Party under Zyuganov who are certainly no fans of Putin...it's clear who the serious people and who the clowns are, and why it is the communists who have widespread popular support and not the anarchists.

There is no good ending for the collective West that doesn't recognize their entire culture and civilizational model has failed, and their countries have to be remade along de-colonial, socialist lines.

Tough pill to swallow but every other path is towards certain disaster.

If the proposal comes from the collective West you can be sure there are ulterior motives and that it almost certainly at least in part is designed to in some way further the West's strategic goals of weakening and containing Russia and China. Proposals like this need to be worked through with a fine tooth comb by experts who understand the subject and can spot where the US or its various tentacles disguised as "NGOs" are trying to insert poison pills.

The US constantly tries to use international treaties to its advantage to cripple their competitors. At the same time they themselves almost never abide by the rules they seek to impose on others, they always find loopholes. If you ask me this is yet another instance of them trying to hide behind the pretense of environmental protection to deny Russia and China access to regions of the globe that in the future are going to be of critical strategic importance but where the US knows it cannot compete on equal terms. It is more "rules-based order" crap, where they make the rules in their interest and everyone else has to follow them.

China and Russia, and in fact all of the global south would be wise to be very skeptical about any proposals the US and its vassals make no matter what they are about. Whether it's environmental, nuclear, whatever. In fact until conclusively proven otherwise i would just assume it's malicious/subversive and refuse on principle anything that any Western entity proposes, because they will never negotiate in good faith and will always seek to use your well intentioned but naive hope of reaching mutually beneficial agreements to advance their own nefarious agenda at your expense.

I think this mostly sums it up:

First of all, don't start by assuming there is anything to refute - never accept the premise of an anti-communist argument without investigating whether it's actually true! Does China really have billionaires in the ranks of the party or is that just a myth that has been popularized to try and discredit the CPC in the eyes of gullible western leftists with ultra tendencies? If they do then how many and in what positions? What is the proportion of capitalists to non-capitalists in the party, and more importantly how much actual influence and power do they really have?

Do not simply accept the framing of these sorts of "gotchas", you must always dig deeper and investigate beyond the cliche phrases and surface appearances, instead looking into the actual dialectical conditions that exist. Whether or not individual capitalist elements are allowed in the ranks of the party says nothing about the fundamental class character of the party itself. If the party was supposedly taken over by revisionist and bourgeois forces, then how is it that the way the Chinese state and economy are run and the results that their system produces are still so radically different from what we see in Western capitalist systems? If the same class is supposedly in power in China as in the West why are they not experiencing the same social and economic dynamics? If the CPC is so revisionist why has it not liberalized the country into the ground and abolished itself like the CPSU did once it was hijacked by revisionists?

And bear in mind that what happened in the USSR happened despite there technically being no capitalists whatsoever in their ruling party right up until that party voluntarily totally disempowered itself and dissolved the dictatorship of the proletariat handing the country to the enemies of the working class on a silver platter. Clearly one must look not just at the composition (though that also matters) but at the guiding ideology and the dominant political line within the party, in addition to how the party is organized and how it governs in practice.

Yeah the pros and cons are pretty simple: Pro: He's not a Democrat or a Republican; Con: He's not a Democrat or a Republican so he stands literally no chance of winning

Still the point of third party candidates running isn't necessarily to win it's to scare one of the two main parties that the third party candidate will siphon off just enough of their votes that it will cost them the victory. Because of this potential for vote splitting third party candidates can sometimes use their platform to apply pressure to the the mainstream candidates to abandon some unpopular policies and adopt some popular ones to win back votes.

This is the theory at least. In practice this turns out to not actually work that way because politicians once elected don't give a single shit about anything they promised in their campaign, instead they just do whatever the big money interests tell them to. Also it's pretty much common knowledge that both Democrats and Republicans alike would rather lose to the other party than give even a single crumb to the people. After all, they are not really two opposing political parties but two sides of the same corporate uniparty. Whichever one wins, you lose.

Not to mention that elected representatives really don't have that much power to meaningfully change the big policy directions of the US anyway. The real power is in the hands of the permanent security state, the intelligence agencies and other tentacles of the deep state apparatus, as well as the military industrial complex and the corporate-financial oligarchy. If politicians try to go against the interests of these groups who actually rule the country everything they try to do will be obstructed after which at best they find their political careers ruined, and if that isn't an option they get a bullet to the back of the head.

I am not anti Ukraine, i am anti-NATO and anti Nazi. I'm pro-Russia because i am pro-Ukraine. I want to see the people of Ukraine liberated, peaceful and prospering and this can only happen if NATO is expelled out of Ukraine along with NATO's proxy fascist junta puppet regime in Kiev.

Right now only Russia's military intervention can achieve that.

Anti-fascist, anti-imperialist struggle is a manifestation of class war. The defeat of imperialism and fascism even by a bourgeois state still advances the cause for the global liberation of the working class. A blow to US hegemony anywhere is a victory for workers everywhere.

Not zero, that would be absurd, but much less than Ukraine. There is a very simple rule of thumb for estimating casualty ratios in such conflicts, and that is they are directly proportional to the artillery overmatch since most casualties in conventional modern conflicts are inflicted by artillery fire. Ukraine has been stockpiling their best equipment and munitions which they received from the West for this offensive, and as a result they are managing to shoot a fair number of shells and missiles in order to try and soften up the Russian lines, but Russia still has an overwhelming advantage. In addition Russia also has almost uncontested air dominance at the moment which further skews the ratio in their favor.

This is the power of advertising, of creating a brand image and a loyal base of dedicated consumer-fans. If a critical mass is reached it even takes on a life of its own and consumers themselves become more effective advertisers than the sellers of the products. A culture of group think and peer pressure is created where identity and consumption are intimately linked.

I know there have been comments before here defending the practice of advertising, even arguing that it is necessary and indispensable, but personally if it was up to me i would have our future socialist states ban all advertising as it is a dangerous and socially unhealthy form psychological manipulation. There are instances in which it creates literal cult-like behavior.