limonfiesta

If alcohol consumption fixed declining birth rates, Japan wouldn’t have an aging population and Russia wouldn’t have been facing a demographic collapse even before the Ukraine invasion.

This isn’t about boosting sex, it’s about being a conservative policy counterweight to opening the door to legalizing medicines derived from cannabis.

My guess is that it’s a result of an internal NJP compromise between center right and hard right factions: only agreeing to allow liberalized medical cannabis policy, if the law also increased the scope of, and penalties for, recreational uses.

But that’s just my assumption based on my limited understanding of Japan’s post-war uniparty government.

Every home should have an auger, but a plunger will work quicker, easier, and cleaner, 99 out of 100 times.

There’s way more history and nuance with the current migration crisis facing Europe than I feel like delving into with this comment, so I’m just going to leave you with a quick note about why you’re being downvoted:

Intentionally trying to capsizing migrants so they drown isn’t the same as “being called racist”. Forget whatever opinions or beliefs motivated these actions, this is attempted murder, at best.

So whether or not your commentary would be reasonable on an article discussing immigration policy, it’s irrelevant to this article. Which again, is about Spanish police trying to drown migrants by intentionally driving their police boat at, and then over, their small dinghy.

Waters outside of a countries economic exclusive zone, per the ratified UN convention.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone

They have been a staple of great power competition since the Cold War, as a means of political signaling, military posturing, and gathering of intelligence.

Possible, but these are also the type of aircraft you would expect to see in mass during any naval conflict or blockading action against China. I believe the PLAAF/PLAN are working on their version of Rapid Dragon.

Relatively slow, but plentiful, cargo planes, would be a pretty obvious choice for launching a saturation attack against USN or Japanese forces operating outside the range of their land based missiles. Again, assuming they develop a similar system to Rapid Dragon.

This isn’t reconnaissance, it’s standard airspace incursion and intercept.

Everyone here seems to be a really hawkish as of late, or possibly just having a very poor understanding of international relations.

Yes, you can.

Russia and Turkey have very different political dynamics than China and Japan.

Also, these types of airspace incursions, followed by intercepts, are pretty standard amongst major powers.

It doesn’t mean they’re benign, but that shooting down Chinese planes intentionally as a response, is something you do if you’re willing and ready for the escalation path to result in open conflict, not simply an escalation.

What benefit? What doubt?

None of the other possibilities reflect well on Russia either.

There’s nothing in that article that provides any information as to how and why the hotel was struck, just that it was struck.

You can acknowledge Putin is a violent dictator, without pretending that he’s some cartoon villain. Evil is more complex than that, and so is war.

Maybe, or it could have been poor intelligence, systems failure, or there could have been an actual HVT at this location, and they just didn’t give a shit about any civilian collateral damage.

I’m not saying any one of those scenarios is more likely than what you’re suggesting, just that they’re all just as likely until we know more.

Edit: my bad, I didn’t realize everyone here already knows for a fact that this was Putin lashing out, and there no possibility that it was anything else. You must share your OSINT gathering secrets with me.

Because of Russia’s vast geography and relatively limited waterway access, it’s better to think of their different fleets almost as individual smaller navies.

Especially in the context of the Black Sea fleet and Turkey’s ability to restrict access of military vessels through Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits because of the Montreux Convention.

So to answer your question under that more narrow scope, I believe it’s roughly 20% of the Black Sea fleet has been destroyed.

Imposter. That was a test. The real 4Chan would know that I use:

FileName.ACTUAL_REAL_LATEST_FINAL_PROD_VERSION

And it works everytime, about 70% of the time.

Are you the hacker known as 4Chan? How else could you know my version naming convention?

Regardless, all will be forgiven if you can remind what folder and file actually contains the final version. So… which is it?

Foreign policy is always about power, end of story.

America has been trying to remove itself from the ME, or at least significantly shrink it’s footprint, without leaving a power vacuum for Iran to fill. The plan was to have KSA and Israel fill that void instead, along with Turkey.

Morality and principles only directly impact foreign policy decisions if they impact the domestic political calculus. For example, if MBS believed moving forward with the Israeli partnership would result in him losing power.

This is not reflective of my own feelings or values. It’s just a neutral observation and assessment of the situation.

You’re not wrong, but maybe you’ve noticed that whenever any country announces they’ve arrested a spy, or foreign intelligence asset, the country they’re accused of spying for always, without fail, denounces it as political persecution and denies the allegations of spying.

So…while there’s recent precedent for political detentions of citizens under false pretense of spying, it’s not like it’s that hard to believe they were a spy.

The only real evidence we have that they aren’t a spy is that they weren’t summarily, and quietly, executed.

We’ll just have to wait and see how they proceed. Will they be used for a prisoner swap of detained Chinese intelligence assets? Or held indefinitely.

Because indefinite detention probably means innocent of spying, and waiting to be used for a political bargaining tool.

No, that’s not what’s happening.

Poor women and women in poor counties are used as baby ovens for the wealthy, or those with the means to rent their wombs. Which is why he specifically refers to it as the “commercialization”.

He’s saying that’s exploitive and immoral as there as children waiting to be adopted. So instead of “renting” a poor women’s womb, adopt a child instead.

Also, FWIW I’m pro-choice, but that doesn’t mean I should pretend everyone who thinks differently is evil.

Opposing abortion isn’t always about a misogynistic need to control women. For some people it’s a genuine belief that life begins at conception, which is what Pope Francis appears to sincerely believe.

That doesn’t extend to everyone, and I’d go so far as to say most of the Evangelical American pro-life movement are just reactionary hateful shitstains who are genuine misogynists that wouldn’t hesitate to get their mistress an abortion.

Anyways, just my $0.02

Security expenditures are just numbers on an Excel sheet, just like HR, and legal…it’s a business.

You know what else is a big threat? Executives of cost-center departments not understanding how to articulate their needs in terms of profit, or profit loss.

HR and legal departments are generally much better at explaining their concerns and needs in terms of profit, and not abstract concepts i.e. security.

You realize that gig economy is the neoliberal slang for a poverty class work, but without the rights of workers, right?

So you’re criticizing people who are forced by the system in which we live, to be ordered around by a fucking algorithm, and then take abuse from people who have enough money to NOT work in the gig economy, but no where near enough to actually own the servant class they get off on abusing.

Not that I’m going to defend the honor or integrity of the American lead neoliberal order, but reading this made me laugh, and loudly:

China’s foreign ministry spokesman on Friday urged Washington to respect international trade rules and market-based principles

China takes all the worst parts of Western capitalism, and finds more ways to make them even shittier. Including enshitifying the already beshitted aforementioned principles.