M3M3M3 comments

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has pushed U.S. thinking toward a new philosophy - "affordable mass,"

It makes sense, but it misses the underlying reason the US shifted to ultra-hightech weapons in the first place. After Vietnam, it became obvious that the US public lacks the stomach to absorb the huge losses inherent to low-tech combat, especially in a foreign conflict.

We need an emotional tribute song for Ukraine as support stalls,” he wrote. “I have lyrics and music.”

Has the FBI released these yet? The people have a right to see them.

Seriously all the people already getting fed up with the illegal immigration.

The problem with complaining about "illegal" immigration is that it barely exists these days. According to asylum laws in almost every western nation, the entire world has the legal right to show up at the border, apply for refugee status, and remain while their case is being processed. If they are rejected, they can re-apply indefinitely by claiming material facts in their case have changed. Illegal immigration doesn't really exist as long as the current asylum framework remains in place.

Well....., he might but that would be the end of him, Russia or possibly all of us so is that a gamble he is willing to take, I'm highly betting not.

The question boils down to whether you really think that NATO and liberal western governments would immediately decide to annihilate millions of Russian civilians with nuclear missiles if Russia launched a single limited strike on an arms depot or shipment within a NATO state. Would that not be irrational and unhinged?

The problem for NATO is that its credibility relies on that commitment of an immediate and overwhelming response to defend its members at any cost. If that response doesn't come for whatever reason, the alliance is finished. It's tempting bluff to call for someone in Putin's position.

I don't imagine Russia could even find one of these shipments. Otherwise they could just hit it when it crosses the border.

The point would not be to successfully hit an actual shipment. It would only be the pretext for a limited strike within NATO territory.

Putin will never attack a NATO country.

I would not be surprised if Putin does this before the war is over. He's not getting any younger and the temptation to call NATOs bluff might become irresistible for him.

If Russia were to launch a pinpoint strike on military supplies crossing the border while still in a country like Romania or Poland, and then issue a statement acknowledging the extraordinary nature of this strike and how the decision was not taken lightly but was considered vital for Russia's security, how would NATO actually respond?

Would there be a retaliatory strike on Russia? Would there be a declaration of war and triggering of Article 5? What would it look like? Which NATO nation would authorise the attack to be launched from its territory given the obvious risks?

For better or worse, NATO would likely be frozen with indecision and disagreement on how to proceed, calling into question its relevance.

Most of you probably weren't around back then, but we had a similar issue with Palestinians 20 years ago. Japan has never recognised the Palestinian state, so under Japanese law any Palestinian who managed to find their way to Japan was considered stateless and immediately eligible for Japanese citizenship. A friend of mine is actually a Palestinian who managed to get Japanese citizenship this way. However, after the numbers started to increase, the government simply issued a Ministerial Ordinance or some other type of interpretive guidance that effectively said "even though Japan doesn't recognise Palestine, it doesn't actually mean Palestinians are stateless because... reasons". The Afghan situation is far less complex than Palestine because Japan does continue to recognise Afghanistan as a sovereign state despite not recognising the current government. Whatever trick they used 20 years ago to change the interpretation of statelessness will likely be re-deployed here.

@ian

The Japanese govt ruled that the baby is Japanese. Where does it say that the govt denied the baby citizenship?

Logically, the only way for this case to have reached the Nagoya High Court is if an application for citizenship was denied by the Minstry of Justice and the parents sued.

@Ian

in the eyes of the Japanese government, her parents are stateless and have no nationality. Under Japan’s Nationality Law, a child born in such a situation is considered to have Japanese nationality.*

Regardless of what the article claims here, the Japanese government clearly disagrees. Otherwise they wouldn't be in court trying to defend their decision to deny the baby citizenship.

I expect this to be overturned, or at least for different courts to reach the opposite conclusion in other cases. Non-recognition of the legitimacy of a governing power in a country does not make a person from that country stateless. If Japan believes that the previous Afghan government and its laws are still the legitimate authority in Afghanistan, then the girl is a citizen under those laws. Of course, it may be impossible for her to ever be issued with a passport, but it does not make her stateless.

The easy way to expose misinformation is to ask them to support it with anyone respectable who espouses the same arguments.

It shuts them down Every. Single. Time.

The logic here is quite poor. You do realise that if you had asked Gallileo to find someone respectable to support his claims, he would have failed? Or if you had to find a single respectable professor, lawyer or scientist in the Soviet Union to question Maxist-Leninist theory, you also would have failed? Ideological power systems perpetuate their own dogma to the point that it's nearly impossible to become 'respectable' within them if you oppose them. Your test doesn’t get us closer to the truth.

Some people will applaud this as progress or the abolition of an arbitrary rule, but the value of setting arbitrary rules is often underappreciated. This rule acts as a filter to find employees who are willing to follow rules. Someone who is willing to submit to arbitrary hair color rules is also likely to submit to other seemingly arbitrary rules about hygiene, rules about safety, rules about quality and consistency etc.

It's no secret that the prevelance of child abuse by step-fathers has always been off the charts. Just as an alpha-male lion systematically kills every cub fathered by other males, humans are also evolutionarily adapted to invest only into their own genetic offspring. No amount of feel-good social engineering will change this.

Of all the LDP hopefuls, Kono is by far the worst.

The investigating officer explained to him that the robber was one of a gang of "gypsies." Seems that Japan isn't the only place where the foreign element is often blamed.

I don't get it. Was he not a gypsie?

...but the asset ends up in Chinese control regardless. This is happening all over Africa.

OK. And if the Africans aren't happy with China retaining any ownership or control in these projects, what stops them from nationalising the entire thing and kicking out all the Chinese? Nothing. China can't take back the highways and ports they've built. There is no ball and chain.

These projects are a way for China to keep their own economy growing by finding new demand for its outputs.

That's a lot of buildings with microphones and infrastructure for China to pretend to own until the next coup.

Exactly. If a coup happens, China never gets repaid. But China doesn't actually expect to be fully repaid anyway. The payoff is the jobs and economic growth within China during the construction phase of the project.

research indicates that workplaces with poor inclusion climates have higher turnover, which in turn creates high replacement and retraining costs for the employer.

Of course, because merit based employees have better job prospects and market value allowing them to change employers more frequently. DEI hires know they can't easily find a similar position elsewhere.

More diversity has been linked with improvements in innovation, communication, organizational performance and profit. 

Correlation is not causation. Fortune 500 companies that are already large, profitable and innovative are the ones that can actually afford to engage in DEI hiring.

And if you can’t pay the loan, no problem! The CCP will happily take a 99 year lease on your mineral rights/deep water ports/ infrastructure etc.

Can you provide examples of the Chinese actually seizing African assets like this? Economists who've studied this issue have concluded that the debt-trap narrative is simply a myth. Logically, if one of these African states were to simply kick out the Chinese without paying, there is very little the Chinese could ever do.

The reality is that these engineering projects are a way of creating demand and subsidising Chinese firms, similar to the way that US military aid is a subsidy to US defence contractors. When African states fail to pay, the Chinese just keep restructuring the loans indefinitely.

How many of you would support a law banning all guns and imposing a mandatory minimum 15 year prison sentence for all violators caught with one? I would.

...But if it later turned out that a single racial demographic made up 80% of convictions under this new law, would you still support it? Serious gun control in America is not only impossible because of rightwing gun advocacy groups. If given carte blanche, the Democrats would also not follow through on meaningful gun control. It's a classic wedge issue used to excite gullible voters.

Given that the US has barely made any progress in 'the war on drugs', what makes people think a repeal of the 2nd amendment and a war on guns would be any more successful?

I'm not saying don't do it, but without an underlying shift in political attitudes towards border enforcement, policing, civil liberties and racial discrimination, it's naive to imagine that meaningful gun control is even possible.

Unless everyone is willing to impose harsh 20 year prison sentences on the 'urban youths' who would be the most likely to keep buying and using illegally imported guns, any repeal of the 2nd amendment is meaningless and purely symbolic.

Taiwanese will fight to the death to prevent a similar fate.

Many of my friends in Japan are Taiwanese who moved here precisely because they don't want to fight to the death.

Some are admittedly concerned about how their life might change under PRC rule, but they aren't stupid enough to sacrifice their own lives to stop it. Especially when they, and most young educated Taiwanese, can easily move to Japan, Australia, the US etc.

If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn't it take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the Treaty of Aigun? 

It's obviously a silly question meant as rhetorical red meat, ... but in case someone is actually interested in the answer, it's because the Treaty of Aigun is no longer the relevant legal instrument defining the borders of Russia and the PRC. For decades the PRC engaged the Soviet Union and later Russia to resolve all exisiting territorial disputes, and they have signed multiple additional treaties that define the borders.

Whenever I read stories like this I always wonder whether it was 'genuine' mail being undelivered, or mostly junk. I suspect all of it could just be stacks of SuitSelect21 summer sale flyers, real-estate brochures, JAL mileage club magazines, and the sort of junk nobody would ask about if it goes missing.

@Underworld

But some kind of moderation and terms and conditions that don't allow criminal content to run rife on Telegram should be enforced.

Unless you explain what this means and how it will be enforced, it's vacuous.

China agrees that CSAM and drug sales are illegal and must be moderated, but so does spreading "social disharmony" and "rumors"

Japan agrees, but they also think all uncensored pornography is illegal.

Middle-eastern countries agree, but they also say it's illegal to insult Islam.

France agrees, but they also say it's illegal to question the Holocaust.

What is your answer to the problem of divergent laws in different states? Should we only moderate criminal activity that all countries agree is illegal, or should every social media CEO be subject to potential arrest everywhere for anything that might be illegal somewhere? Telegram is a Dubai based corporate entity.

@John

This is analogous to a restaurant boss being arrested because he knowingly condoned the mafia using his place to deal drugs or olan hits.

Knowledge alone does not make you an accessory to a crime. Nor is serving members of the public food and providing a table likely enough to make you part of the criminal conspiracy.

And yet this has nothing to do with censorship. France isn't trying to censor anything.

They clearly are. Many of the crimes that Durov will be accused of being complicit in are likely to be violations of French hate speech laws, holocaust denial, and so on. Of course these are actual crimes in France even if they aren't in Japan and elsewhere.

In my view, outright censorship in the form of Chinese-style national firewalls and strict controls over ISPs would be more honest and preferable to what France is attempting to achieve here. Simply claiming that something is illegal in your country is an unworkable standard. There are millions of posts on Facebook and X that violate domestic Chinese law but Zuckerberg and Musk are never arrested when they visit China. If you don't want something harmful being accessible in your country, it falls on you to filter it out and censor it, not on a foreign company to moderate according to your national standards.

It's like arresting the owner of a restaurant where the mafia likes to eat and plan crimes just because he refuses to install a bug under the table.

Part of the problem is that modern law enforcement has become so reliant on having all the electronic evidence served up to them on a silver platter. If they can't get access to phones and chats, they either lack the will or the resources to investigate crime the old-fashioned way.

In reality, she was born female and was registered as a girl at birth by a doctor.

She was born female, was registered as a girl at birth, is legally a woman & continues to identify as a woman. She also comes from Algeria where it is illegal to transition.

Why is this relevant? Had this person been born in a country with a more advanced medical system, they would have been recognised as male but with a birth defect. Just because some poorly educated doctor in Algeria looked down at a babies genitals and ticked a box 20 years ago doesn't mean women boxers should be put in danger today.

For years the media has been running cover for Biden's cognitive decline. Tonight, his supporters came face to face with what was being hidden from them.

The students are getting a masterclass in who actually holds power and privilege in America.

Hosting fake content is not a right in Australia, and if the government directs you to remove content in its country then that should be done immediately

You seem to misunderstand the controversy. The order demands that the content be removed entirely from X, not simply that it be made inaccessible to users in Australia. If every country were to follow Australia's lead and adopt similar laws allowing global content moderation, it would be impossible to post anything even remotely political/religious on Twitter/X.

Is that a bad joke? The plan is definitely NOT fair. It shovels more more public money to people having kids while raising the tax burden on people not having kids

It's entirely fair and reasonable in my opinion. Children are a valuable asset for society and raising them is a huge financial burden on parents. It makes perfect sense for the childless to contribute their fair share, so as not to become free-riders.