It’s insane that a country which suffered so much under a fascist dictatorship would want to return fascists to power.

Turkey won’t allow military ships to pass the Bosporus in any direction while there’s a war on. This prevents Russia from reinforcing their Black Sea fleet but also prevents Western navies from entering.

The cruise line is concerned about upsetting their passengers, that is all.

Those are countries that care about free speech. They would also allow burning the bible or the Torah … it’s not just the Koran. The inference in the headline is flawed.

No matter which side you are in the statement “The Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world.” is objectively true. The shortfall in opioid production will easily be made up from other sources, likely adulterated with synthetics that cause more harm. As for the Afghan farmers who grew the stuff they’ve not been given another alternative…they just had their crops destroyed and have no other sources of income.

So if corporate greed is responsible for things like high oil prices what happened on April 20, 2020 when oil prices touched 0.01 per barrel? Do you think the oil companies were suddenly overcome with a spirit of charity?

It’s true there may be some profiteering during times of economic instability but those are exceptions and they certainly don’t account for the high profits experienced after the pandemic…those were a result of supply chain bottlenecks and a release of pent up demand. Corporate profits are now trending back down, at least in the US. Do you think the companies there have suddenly become less greedy?

The article confuses cause and effect. Stratospheric corporate profits are the result of too much money chasing too few goods and services, the same as it’s always been. The culprits are not corporations but rather profligate spending by rich world governments.

During the pandemic central banks reacted by opening up the money spigots, injecting vast amounts of cash into economies trying to keep them afloat. It was the right thing to do. The problem was that they never turned off the taps, nor did they raise interest rates or taxes to try to balance the books.

The fact that companies raise prices in response to shortages is not only natural it’s also desirable. There is no other way to align supply and demand short of rationing.

There’s nothing inherently bad about propaganda. The problem with Russian propaganda is that it’s trying to justify a brutal invasion that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, among them children buried in rubble by missile strikes. The US did the same after it’s invasion of Iraq. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.

U.S. joint military training is not only aimed at pressuring China, but also combatting revolutionary and progressive forces inside the countries that cooperate with the U.S.

All of the countries and territories in the region that cooperate with the US are democracies - unlike China. Their governments can be voted out if they act against the wishes of the people, which suggests that the populations of these regions support being friendly with Uncle Sam. Could it be they feel more threatened by China than by the US? Taiwan certainly thinks so.

Cuba was removed from the list during the Obama administration and put back on the list by Trump. This has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with appeasing a large and vocal group of Cubans in Florida.

China made a smart decision decades ago to massively ramp up investment in technologies related to sustainable energy. For example they are now by far the largest producer of refined rare earth metals and other green minerals. That decision today seems prescient.

The problem is that their environmental record is spotty at best. The metals they produce are extracted and processed as cheaply as possible, mainly to undercut competition. There is a considerable negative environmental impact to doing so with which they will one day have to reckon.

I was thinking it was just a right wing, anti-immigrant politician, not an actual Nazi. Then I went to check… holy hell.

Citizens of authoritarian countries often trust their governments more than those in liberal democracies. This apparent paradox is easily explained by the tight control these governments maintain over what people can see and hear. Since Tiananmen the Chinese government has ramped up it’s campaign to eradicate any opinions that are contrary to the government line, and now a whole generation has grown up in this new, hermetically sealed environment.

The people involved with the search had assumed this was the case all along. Sudden loss of both navigation and communication strongly indicates a catastrophic event.