Destin Skye comments

We already had SEATO until the USA's President Nixon sold us all so that he could schmooze up to China and use them as a lever against the USSR in the 1970s. Because of that, there's no longer any mutual defense pacts with Taiwan, let alone other Asian nations. At what point does America wake up and rectify its sins?

NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but it includes. the U.S., Turkey, etc., that are not North Atlantic countries. Will Ishiba's idea of the NATO-like alliance the same?

Umm, the USA is the depositary nation of NATO. What that means is, NATO is entrusted to America for which America cannot leave, nor can NATO exist without America. It was done so because of the events of WWII that I'm surprised that you have never heard about. All European nations were conquered, but one, the United Kingdom. Next time, they may not be so fortunate. As such, the Allied powers agreed to place NATO with the USA since an invasion of the USA by any nation is impossible.

As for Turkey, they control the strategic Bosphorus and Dardanelle Straits connecting the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas to the Black Sea controlled by Russia. No one can venture into or out of the other without Turkish permission. As such, NATO considers Turkey to be a strategic asset by which to hamper any war aspirations by Herr Putin.

I'm not even an American and I know this! Is school not taught anymore?

bass4funk, why the hapless futility? You know, like everyone here knows, that as soon as anyone sees your name, they downvote without even having to read your American Republican drivel.

You're not Japanese, you're not in Japan, you have shown you have absolutely no interest in anything Japan. And I am quite surprised the moderators at Japan Today have not simply banned you outright for being a brazen propagandist who takes money from the Kremlin as laid out in the Justice Department report.

Assange is not a journalist, he has never worked as a journalist, he's never even pretended to be a journalist, he never went to journalism school or even college. He is, however, a career criminal who was kicked out of his home country of Australia and is what caused him further trouble on the lam in Sweden where he committed a string of further crimes before committing the crime of the century in assisting Rupert Murdoch, his mentor, to get Vladimir Putin to overturn the 2016 election. That's a fact, and another undeniable fact is that I'm a better hacker than Assange and Snowden combined.

Legion of Doom

finally richToday  11:27 am JST

2017 to 2021.

The peaceful years when the "russian collusion" was everything we had to worry about.

That's exactly what broke America. Russians in the Oval Office tending to their Employee of the Year™ Donald Trump™. It seems that Mr. Trump never met a grift he wouldn't pursue.

I must say, I read this with the amusement of having read hundreds of articles about angry Americans claiming their government is spying on them while at the same time the private corporations in America steal everyone blind and store their data for infinity. I also have enjoyed reading about Edward Snowden who stole from the government and then turned everything over to private companies. He seems to be about as credible as Lucifer giving a sermon in an American church.

Speaking of Lucifer, then there's Trump who had the American legal system hand ever-increasing power to these private corporations while he himself said he distrusted his own appointees and his own military. As an outsider, I find all of this so fantastical that I have to wonder why Hollywood has not made a blockbuster movie about all of this farce. Is that the correct term in English?

"Some" being the operative word.

One such example would no doubt be the 1965 Ferrari 250 GTO. One of the most sought after and copied sports cars in the world.

Elon Musk despises free speech and all things Libertarian. What Elon Musk engages in is 'Me Speech'. He creates an echo chamber of like-minded individuals who play-up his drug-induced ideas. He stifles all dissent and will ban someone for any criticism of him.

It is duly noted that the Axis power of Russia still remains as the only nation to not recognize the end of WWII and still refuses to sign any treaties to that effect.

Perhaps the best Games ever! From the opening ceremony to the closing. Way, way better than the farce we were forced to watch in Sochi.

I have studied my share of western philosophers and theorists, and one whose words and warnings stand out is an English, enlightenment-era philosopher named John Locke. I'll begin with his simple quote and expand from there.

"As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to."

I dislike the concept that one person can control so much of others' lives in this day and age, through everything from what the person can be shown with regard to news, or entertainment, or even mundane things like shopping.

I dislike only being shown things which only they want me to see, I aspire to be as well-read and well-informed as I possibly can be, whether it is discussing the topics of the day or simply planning a product purchase. I feel that when media companies of every kind have the power to attempt to influence my decision on something, that is when they have crossed the line into tyranny and are engaging in conduct that no one should have a right to, as John Locke stated in the quote above.

Thus, I waste none of my time on so-called 'influencers' that are all over the Internet by the millions. I prefer, instead, to do my own analysis, research and judgement as to what is best for me. That is my power of individual liberty.

This is why coffee prices have been through the roof over the last 2-3 years. Bean farms in South America have been getting ravaged by climate change so much that one of them, a 4th generation farm, is attempting an eco-solution by growing the coffee beans in shaded areas with forest canopies and even switching some fields to a more drought-resistant crop of coffee bean which is less desired but one which guarantees a larger harvest to offset the Arabica losses that are much more environmentally sensitive. Vietnam has also been suffering as well, and they are one of Asia's biggest coffee exporters.

If New Zealand thinks that relying on 1850s technology is going to save them then they've already entered another Dark Age.

Why would Israel be invited in the first place? They know nothing of nuclear strikes. Also, in 1944, Israelis led by Menachim Begin made a formal declaration of war against the Allies and continued to fight the Allies until 1948. The King David Hotel Massacre was part of that was against Britain and the Allies and remains controversial to this day with NATO nations barred from attending the victory ceremony Israels holds every year at the site of the massacre.

I think this is a double-standard. Remember when Facebook sold everyone's personal data to Cambridge Analytica that was working for Russia's intelligence services?

Why, then, was Facebook not forced to be sold due to national security reasons?

SeapigJuly 27  07:36 pm JST

I certainly don’t think that everything Japan does is super but I have to agree that your “madness” remark is either a “strange take”, jealousy, or that you think “everything Japan does is terrible” if you’re alluding to the number of world heritage sites in Japan. You do realize that the number of world heritage sites in Japan doesn’t even put Japan in the top 10 by number when compared to all other countries.

If you comment is the world heritage sites around the world are becoming a dime a dozen and is actually detracting from the value of the title then I agree, the world heritage foundation seems to have gone mad in designating everything as a world heritage site. There are now far too many around the world in my opinion.

The top 3 countries, Italy has 58, Russia will have 58 when it's remaining is approved, China has 56. But you single out Japan for criticism. Why? Why do you not criticize those other nations? Some of them have war memorials built in the modern era that are on the list and which have nothing to do with World Heritage. Another has their government offices on the listing, which again has nothing to do with World Heritage.

I'll agree that perhaps the World Heritage Centre designation of questionable sites has led to them becoming "a dime a dozen" as you stated, and I'll go further and state that some of the sites are even a mockery of World Heritage. But those are not being criticized, why only Japan's?

I was just reading about forced sterilization around the world and I have to say that I am shocked to read that in the United States, eugenics and forced sterilization are still legal. And that the last time Americans were forcibly sterilized was in 2020 when President Trump ordered the forced sterilization of all the women being held in detention in the American state of Georgia because they were Hispanic. It also says prior to that there are unknown thousands who were sterilized in other states after being separated from their children and their children forced to be adopted. How cruel America is!

rcchToday  10:32 am JST

Also, Piers Morgan was right when he said: “ Trump walked into the Republican National Convention like a UFC star. Biden meanwhile fumbles questions about his own incendiary rhetoric in the lead up to Saturday's shooting. “

The xenophobic, anti-Asian bigot Piers Morgan has never been correct about anything. He is a propagandist for the far right in both Britain and America.

bass4funkToday  07:53 am JST

X is the platform, has nothing to do with the individual posting nor does it have anything to do with the people in the video uttering these things, the only thing and what is fabulous about the platform is, liberals don’t have a monopoly anymore on Free speech unlike other platforms that will silence, ban or throttle you. So it’s reliable when it comes to allowing free speech.

Actually, Musk is against free speech. My account is suspended because I asked him why he didn't enforce free speech fairly between both sides in America. If Musk was for free speech, then he would have answered my question. Instead, he chose to prove his detractors right when they say he is using it as a vehicle for self-promotion and self-interest while snuffing out any opinions to the contrary.

JJEToday  07:33 am JST

Single most provable fact here is that the Kuril Islands are UN-recognized sovereign territory of the Russian Federation.

Being that Russia refused to fight Japan until less than a month before WWII ended, and having never fought a battle against the Japanese, they didn't have any rights to any land in Asia.

Furthermore, why weren't the islands given to the USA who fought both Germany and Japan while Russia was hiding for 4 years? The USA carried the Allies on their back and the Allies would not have won without the USA. Perhaps Putin should repay the USA's favor by ceding to the USA all land east of Moscow.

Anything less is an injustice.

Every power has a limited time..

Russia, which is more than twice the age of the United States, definitely has very limited time remaining. Putin will get his wish in being the last ruler of Russia before it ceases to exist. Then the world will be better off. Then Kamchatka can be returned to Japan, it's historical owner.

By chance, did you know that in 1920 Lenin sought to provoke a war between the United States and Japan by offering a 60-year lease of Kamchatka to American capitalists to exploit? Ultimately, the USA foolishly rejected the offer. When WWII happened, the USA would have been given permanent ownership of Japan through its saving of Russia from annihilation, as historically happened, but then the USA would have handed Kamchatka back to Japan because the USA has never been as greedy as Putin.

Unsurprising since Russia was then, and still is, an Axis power than has never atoned for nor repented for its many war crimes and atrocities it committed in WWII. Naturally, the Axis power of Russia still considers itself to be in a state of war with both Japan (Russia waited until August 8, 1945 to finally leave the Axis Tripartite treaty less than a month prior to Japan's surrender due to US and British action. Russia waiting till the last minute for easy land grabs. For example, the current Korean Question of hositlities between North and South is because Russia demanded half of the Korean Peninsula despite the fact not a single Russia soldier died defending the Korean peoples. It was an outrage then, it's still an outrage now. Whether the name is Stalin or Putin the results are the same, betrayal and oppression.

People are quick to rush out the excuse, "A gun by itself has never shot anyone."

And yet, an unarmed human by itself has never shot anyone either.

Maybe we should separate humans and guns so that one cannot use the other to shoot someone.

wallaceToday  01:07 pm JST

Both Trump and Biden are too old for a second term. There needs to be an age limit of 70 when taking office for the first term.

Had President Thomas Jefferson gotten his way, there would be a maximum age of 65 to hold -ANY- public office in the United States. Needless to say, he didn't get his way. Just like Republicans call for term limits but then vote against the bill to impose term limits.

I'm always interested in why people say Biden is too old, but Trump is not, when in fact they are literally the same age with many of the same problems concerning age. Trump is the one whose health has been in free-fall ever since he passed a military physical in 1967 with flying colors only to be stricken down just a year later when he produced a letter for the draft board who drew his number which showed that he had paraplegia from massive bone spurs in both feet. In more modern times, Trump's rapidly deteriorating health has even affected his hobbies such as golfing. When he was still president in 2020, Trump averaged 72 holes of golf per day. Here in 2024, he's barely averaging 9 holes a day. How can he even justify having a club membership at this point? He's over, finished!

isabelleToday  11:10 am JST

Apart from female gamers like me and millions of others, at least.

Good to see this kind of comment. I met my fiancé 20 years ago in the video game Star Wars Galaxies and, after a long-distance relationship for 9 years, we've been a couple now for the past 11 years. And we're still gamers. And our phone bills are significantly lower, haha.

But it was through knowing her, and some other women gamers, that opened my eyes to the abuse they go through. I had to play my girlfriend's account sometimes while she was at work in order to help grind for in-game stuff. And, OMG, the constant stream of messages that I would get on her account, most of them vulgar. Yeah, I know all about "guy talk" as I'm a guy, but as a guy I also know that men are the problem.

Mr Kingpling Today 06:50 am JST

Keep throwing your money after a lost cause....

Wasn't the United Kingdom and Finland considered a "lost cause" in 1939 too?

deanzaZZR Today 08:44 am JST

US military intelligence, an oxymoron of the highest (bloodiest and most dangerous) order

And yet, you are perfectly fine with Russian military intelligence carrying out targeted assassinations around the world, some of which has unleashed WMD in public areas due to their bloody and dangerous agenda?

One thing I would like comment sections to stop doing, because it feeds into exactly what this poll is about, is to stop displaying how many likes and dislikes a comment has. Sure, allow people to continue liking/disliking, just don't show the total. That simply encourages people to jump on bandwagons and try to upvote the narrative they want to be valid, whether it's true or not, whether it's right or wrong, whether it's harmful or innocuous.

An example of this kind of groupthink is something I've experienced many times. It starts off as a debate/argument between two people. One person, almost always it is the person who is wrong, will then tag 3, 5, or 10+ "friends" to then come jump into the conversation to back them up. It then turns into a bully pulpit where 10+ people are ganging up against a lone individual. 10+ people are still wrong, but they're trying to win through intimidation by sheer numbers.

I see comment sections like this, and public comments on social media, as being the same thing where gangs of people will rush in and like/dislike comments, news opinions, etc., all so that they can then hope to "win" through sheer numbers and intimidation. And that's what it boils down to. It's never about right vs wrong, it's about who "wins". It needs to stop.

Putin has already cancelled Russia's elections for next year by preemptively declaring himself the winner.

Ignorance and arrogance mixed with laziness is primarily why the US won't switch. Americans won't even wear masks to save their lives, how can someone expect them to bother learning a new system? Many Americans don't even know a second language. Russia is exactly like the US, but opposite at the same time. Many Russians learn a second language, almost always English, to better themselves because they know there's no future at home, much like Americans don't learn a second language because they think their home is the future. Russia and the US are inextricably linked in what seems to be a futile race to the bottom borne out of pure pettiness and contempt. China? A close second, hoping the US and RU eliminate each other before the Chinese economy crashes in the next 5 years, as it will.

Since we, the users of social media, are the content creators that make social media companies popular enough that the companies are making Trillions off of us... I think all of us users should go on strike until they pay us. Without us users, the social media companies are nothing.