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.

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.