People die and kill for just a few square meters of land, you're delusional if you think the Russian nation will just let itself be destroyed without fighting back. Nominal GDP is not a good way to measure wealth, GDP PPP, industrial output and other stats are better. Russia is not a superpower but no one can deny that Russia is an industrial power. Your hate of Russia disgust me.
Lets remember how things unfolded last time was there much fighting? The China has fairly simple working strategy they stimulate immigration into formerly annexed parts at current rates in a decade +/- they will be local majority population.
I learned programming with JRuby SL4A on my smartphone. I can't imagine anyone doing this today. Gingerbread is without a doubt my favorite Android version. You had so much freedom back then!
>The argument is essentially that China's economy doesn't function as a proper market economy.
Which is true. I really hope this happens, it's time for China to start playing by the rules of a real market economy or lose access to the global market. We should not tolerate China subsidizing their industry, at the expense of other industrial countries.
>That's why I'm proposing an immediate, violent solution, not one based on nonexistent cooperation, politics, or locals who care.
You surprise me, from the comments you made a few days back on the European refugee crisis, I though you were a peaceful person. Now your true nature is revealed. Would you be willing to sacrifice your own life, to save the elephants? Would you be willing to kill another human being yourself, to save the elephants? If your not willing, I don't even know how you come up with this ideas!
I'm not a hawk or a dove, the world isn't black and white and situations should be examined on their own merits. People fleeing unlivable conditions, who are essentially helpless, and who are fleeing conditions with deep roots in the places they're fleeing to, are a very different set of circumstances. Not to mention that there is simply no need for the extremes of violence, that would just be a ridiculous choice to satisfy xenophobia.
In this case, the helpless and nearly extinct intelligent animals aren't humans, but elephants. For decades, peaceful attempts have been made to preserve them in some way, and all of those attempts are failing. The alternatives are very clearly to take drastic action, or accept the extinction of an intelligent species.
As for whether I'd be willing to kill a human to save an elephant, yes, I would frankly welcome the chance. I despise people who destroy life in the name of ideology, profit, and a general lack of giving a shit. The only difference for me personally is that I'd be much more willing to kill the people truly responsible, rather than the poachers themselves who are often tools of those people.
And the folks funding it are tools of the folks merchandising the products (ivory etc). And they are the tools of the folks buying the products. Who are the tools of the fashion industry. Ad infinitum.
In the end, we are all responsible for our own part in the play. Go ahead and shoot poachers - they know what they're doing. Got to break the chain somewhere.
So to be clear, "you would not be willing to sacrifice your own life, to save the elephants", yet you would kill the father, the brother, the son of someone, to save the elephants?
I'm not interesting in committing suicide, but obviously assassinating people isn't likely to yield a long life for the assassin. The other reality is that "sacrificing my own life" while very symbolic, is totally useless, so I have to wonder why you're so focused on that one point to the exclusion of literally everything else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use#Russia