Illyas comments

Distributing cannabis “is no different than distributing free t-shirts and it certainly did not act to interfere with the election," he said.

I don't have a problem with legalizing it, but seeing marijuana treated lighter than even cigarettes is a bit strange.

I find the condemnation and 'genderfication' of violence (e.g. macho male) a bit strange coming off half a decade of commenters here condoning political violence against people expressing constitutionally protected speech they don't like. I suppose if Chris Rock had been making a joke at the expense of race instead of medical disability it would have been good and righteous.

This guy sounds like a total sociopath. 'Let's raise infant mortality so Russians turn against Putin!' There are perfectly legitimate humanitarian reasons to maintain operations in Russia. In fact this attitude is rather reminiscent of the tragedies imposed on Iraqi civillians in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

It is deeply offensive.

It seems more like people look to be offended because being a victim is seen as empowering.

Basically an entire article trying to conflate creationists with people that object to critical race theory aka white self-flagellation.

Right-wing critics have made a number of erroneous allegations about critical race theory: that it is taught in public schools

This is false. Liberals can keep claiming this until they're blue in the face, it doesn't negate the objective evidence to the contrary, nor the obvious counter - if it isn't taught in the first place, then why are you so upset about it being banned from being taught?

Oh, so you think morality should be trumped by capitalistic financial motivations.

I'm actually saying that from a mercantilist perspective this actually helps Russia's economy if anything. Not that I accept your inherent claim that it's immoral to sell consumer goods to Russian citizens to begin with.

It seems a tad counterproductive to cede Western market share to either Chinese or even domestic (Russian) producers. Not like the Russians won't still have phones or cinema. These sorts of voluntary withdrawals from the Russian market seem like an attempt to encourage a popular revolt against Putin, but I can't help but feel like it has a serious chance of doing the opposite and galvanizing support if normal Russians are made to feel 'under attack'. Regardless it certainly flies in the face of that old claim that trade and cultural exchange would naturally lead to liberalization in countries like China and Russia.

defend democracy

Ukraine literally overthrew their democratically elected government in 2014 by force. The audacity of reporters to still bring out this line even now is breathtaking. Just say what this really is, a battle to decide whether Ukraine is a Western client state or a Russian one.

Above article written by Harvard and Boston Professors of gynecology and medicine. They most certainly know more about this than you or I. Leave that to them.

Appeal to authority fallacy, and not even a persuasive one given how the above article didn't actually rely on hard science to prove anything. Citing genetic disorders as proof that humans aren't sexually dimorphic is downright insulting to everyone's intelligence and an insult towards anyone with those conditions that doesn't agree with this agenda.

Nothing like an article about idol groups to bring out the judgmental folks.

They’re still no match for kpop idols.

Kpop idols endure rigorous training from a young age and often receive plastic surgery. Meanwhile the Japanese idol groups are dominated by part-timers and college students where a crooked tooth is seen as something to adore by fans. I vastly prefer the Japanese scene.

I always find it funny how the nominally pro-science crowd always turns incredibly speculative and non-rigorous when it comes to attributing natural disaster to climate change. As if there aren't a million confounding factors (record-keeping, population, development, etc) and a lack of a control to compare against (no extra Earth sans climate change).

Outlawing addictive substances is not the way to mitigate the harm those substances cause.

This is just due to a failure to enforce on the part of certain Western countries so you end up with both harsh punishments for individuals while mountains of drugs continue to flow in freely. Meanwhile plenty of NE Asian countries have had plenty of success with zero tolerance thanks to them actually enforcing it. People talk about the 'war on drugs' in the US as if that's actually truly been a thing, when that term was literally coined at a time when the CIA was facilitating drugs coming in to the US. There has never actually been a war on drugs to begin with.

Last time we went to Europe, we could go a whole day and only see one large personal vehicle on the road. Here in the States, needlessly large dinosaurs are everywhere.

It's almost like there's a difference in climate, terrain, and levels of urbanization.

My understanding is that generally whenever the United States has done this in the past the government has actually ended up making a profit as they can buy back what they drew down later on when prices are lower. Perhaps Japan can do the same assuming logistic costs involved aren't much higher?

Unvaccinated are more likely to catch the virus, and are more invective when they have it.

It's funny how lemmings like you never update your talking points when new information comes out that counters them. Keep acting like a poor vaccine against something only ~6 times more serious than influenza is worth reshaping society and cutting people out of your life though, you lunatic.

Oh no, not the heckin 3% drop in share price. By the way, how many hundreds of % is the Tesla stock up since the last Musk twitter controversy that journalist hacks used to claim shareholders would be so much better off without him? Article writers like this one have literally been humiliated year after year and yet face zero repercussions for it. There isn't even a hint of introspection in the article about this. Yet another reason trust in media is so low.

Ladapo offered to go outside, but the senator said she did not want to sit on the metal picnic tables on a warm day

The funny thing is that doing business outside without a mask would give her better odds than breathing re-circulated air inside an office room even with mask use.

ordered face coverings for all school children from preschool through 12th grade

I feel like a lot of people are really exaggerating the benefits of masking. The effect on the r0 is very slight, and how effective masks are when used by fussy school children cramped together in crowded classrooms for 8 hours a day, day after day, seems very questionable. Is such a major political fight really necessary over something that likely has virtually no impact on the virus's actual spread? It seems like the issue is no longer a matter of science or statistics but instead one of culture war politics.

Pretty rich seeing liberal posters here claim 'free speech' when they've spent the past 5 years justifying all types of censorship by all sorts of means up to and including physical violence. The ugly truth is that might does make right, and all claims of free speech vs hate speech are just post hoc rationalization.

It's pretty telling that in the progressive mind the completely unsubstantiated claim of racism outweighs the actual threat to the lives of millions of Australians posed by the virus, to the point where they can actually claim with a straight face that the PM has 'blood on his hands' for attempting to enforce quarantines. A claim that literally rests on the fact that current 'country with a major outbreak' happens to be non-white. That's literally the sum total of evidence, yet it's apparently enough.

@PTownsend

Dehumanization tactic.

This article is really poorly written. The headline says Suga supports the male-only rule, the first paragraph says that Suga supports discussion about the male-only rule taking place (which implies he's open to changing it), and the second paragraph is a quote with zero context to explain which one is correct.

Smooth and steady leadership, just like Abe-san. Comments here are dominated by Western liberals, so seeing them all whining and crying is par for the course. Good job, Suga-san!

To those who want to whine about learning the language and how multiculturalism negatively affects countries,

You have a strawman in your head if you think people concerned with multiculturalism are particularly worried about things like multilingual support for natural disasters or tourism.

get with the times. We are an international world.

Nothing about modernity or internationalism necessitates multi-culturalism. Nor is it in any way inevitable.

Except none of these people are stepping in Japan as the first safe country. Once they're no longer in danger and are simply migrating to the most economically advantageous country they are no longer refugees. Legally, they're breaking the law and Japan isn't obligated to accept them.

Imagine being labeled an ultra-nationalist because you want your nation's military to be on the same footing as the other 192 nations of the world.

Where in this case the state is Japan due to "The bulk carrier Wakashio, owned by Nagashiki Shipping Co and operated by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd" which is a Japanese registered company. Making Japan legally obligated

Except it's not, as that's not how international maritime law works.

@rgcivillian1

because it only solicits volunteers locally for fear of importing the virus.

Major disasters always require outside help from skilled workers. For example, I know electricians in the continental US that got contracted to travel to Puerto Rico and work there for months after the hurricane there. Without being able to do things like that, disaster recovery is very slow. You must have a very warped perspective if you think there's just mountains of unemployed skilled foreign looking workers in Kumamoto waiting to be employed. But please continue using the misery of those affected by the disaster to whine about racism while exhibiting outright bias against the native population.

Many studies and economic models have shown that moving to a "green" economy will provide millions of new jobs.

Laughable. Vast majority of supposed 'green' jobs are only tangentially related. A roofer that installs 1 solar roof and 99 normal roofs gets counted as a 'green' job for the purpose of these biased studies, when that job would exist regardless of the solar industry. Sleight of hand isn't exactly new for climate alarmists though, I suppose.

Sounds like someone trying to whitewash history to me.

Separatism was the actual root cause rather than slavery. Look at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_crisis#Negotiation_andconfrontation(1833)

As Andrew Jackson presciently wrote in 1833, "the tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and Southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question."

People growing up today don't seem to realize that prior to the Civil War, people that grew up in, say Virginia or New York state actually viewed themselves as much a citizen of that state as they did a citizen of the United States. Regionalism actually meant something at that time, and the primary division in Congress was based on it. Even the founders recognized this by setting up the Senate as the designated chamber for representation of state interests. Such nuance is lost in the modern day though, where it's easier to say that the Civil War was simply over slavery. For comparison, this would be like saying that the American Revolution was simply over taxes.