Kevin Rudd: The Avoidable War

【SCMP】China’s zero-Covid policy under review as economic pressure mounts, chief epidemiologist says

Multiple teams in China are studying how to improve the country’s anti-pandemic policies, as economic pressure from its zero-Covid approach intensifies, according to one of the nation’s most prominent epidemiologists.

Yury Tavrovsky: Ukraine ‘invasion’ day passes peacefully, defies ‘war hype’

Although the US previously claimed that Russia planned to attack Ukraine on Wednesday, the day passed peacefully with the recent partial pullback of Russian troops from some border areas, although Washington and NATO said they did not see the pullback and are insistent on their claims of imminent war to prevent an easing of tensions.

Francis Fukuyama: Title IX and the Administrative State

In my last post, I noted that state regulation in the United States, while often lighter than in European democracies, has been very intrusive in the area of civil rights. It is in this realm that regulation has raced ahead of public opinion, and even ahead of Supreme Court judgments regarding the limits of federal action. The best illustration of this is the steadily expanding interpretation of Title IX.

【The Washington Diplomat】David M. Lampton: US-China relations at their worst in years, Wilson Center scholars warn

As European diplomats race to avert war between Russia and Ukraine, one country stands out for its refusal to condemn the Kremlin’s military threats against Russia’s neighbor: China.

JEFFREY D. SACHS: How to Protect Ukraine's Sovereignty

Rather than trying to pretend that one side is a saint and the other a sinner, everyone involved in the latest NATO-Russia conflict should recognize that they have a mutual interest in long-term security. That implies a diplomatic settlement in which Ukraine secures its sovereignty through neutrality.

Zhou Rong: Winter Olympic Games promote Peace, Harmony & Togetherness

Islamabad, 16 February 2022 (TDI): Winter Olympics is an opportunity for the world to build and give peace a chance. There should not be any politics in sports as these games are to learn to coexist and develop a shared future for mankind.

Zhou Rong: China, France deepen RMB Cross-Border Interbank Payment System cooperation

The cooperation between China and France on the RMB Cross-Border Interbank Payment System will help with internationalization of the yuan and will also provide an opportunity for the eurozone to reduce its reliance on the US dollar, experts said.

Zamir Ahmed Awan: Appeal to avert Ukraine crisis

It seems diplomacy failed and the Ukraine crisis is heading toward human disaster. President Putting blames the US for creating a situation where human disaster is unavoidable, while the US is threatening Russia on the Ukraine issue.

Francis Fukuyama: The Administrative State

One of the most long-standing complaints of American conservatives concerns the emergence, growth, and spreading mandates of the so-called “administrative state.” The Trump administration framed this in a typically crude way as the malign “deep state” of unelected bureaucrats doing the bidding of shadowy elites against the interests of ordinary Americans. Trump and his advisors like Steve Bannon vowed that they would smash the deep state as their first order of business.

Ding Gang: Targeting China makes US Indo-Pacific Strategy goals unachievable

A year after Biden took office, the US released its much-anticipated US Indo-Pacific Strategy on February 11. It is a report drenched in poison.

Zamir Ahmed Awan: Criticism on President Joe Biden’s decision to avert Afghan assets to victims of 9/11

President Joe Biden signed an executive order allowing $7 billion in frozen assets from Afghanistan's central bank to eventually be distributed inside the country and to potentially fund litigation brought by families of victims of the September 11 terror attacks, senior administration officials confirmed Friday.

John Ross: China 3 USA 0 – Beijing inflicts a severe economic defeat on America

The news that US inflation has reached its highest level for 40 years, at 7.5% in January, is the most explicit indicator of serious problems in its economy. The monetary tightening that will be used to attempt to bring this under control will both slow the US economy and inevitably spill over into major effects on the world economy.

Grzegorz W. Kołodko: From arms to bridges

The time must come when the ruling elites will be able to draw the obvious conclusion that there is a need to cut deeply military spending, and redirect the military-related financial means to counteract global warming and coordinate economic activities to limit the areas of economic and social exclusion.

Vijay Prashad: Terrible fate faces the Afghan people

On February 8, UNICEF Afghanistan sent out a bleak set of tweets. One of the tweets, which included a photograph of a child lying in a hospital bed with her mother seated beside her, said :“Having recently recovered from acute watery diarrhea, two-year-old Soria is back in hospital, this time suffering from edema and wasting. Her mother has been by her bedside for the past two weeks anxiously waiting for Soria to recover.”

Diao Daming: Giant panda new ‘evil’ to US anti-China lawmakers

He Weiwen: Unilateral actions violate China-U.S. phase-one trade deal

Reuters recently quoted an official of a leading U.S. business group as saying that as "Chinese haven't met their commitment in phase one," Washington will consider a range of trade measures against China, including the resumption of "Section 301" investigation.

William Jones: Biden's Indo-Pacific strategy will finally fail

If there was any doubt in anybody's mind regarding the policy of the U.S. government toward China, the issuance of the formal "Indo-Pacific Strategy" by the White House on February 11 makes the point crystal clear: the Joe Biden administration intends to build a wall of containment around China.

William Jones: Fostering the Olympic spirit in a strife-ridden world

While NATO and the Western countries have sent more troops to the borders of Russia and phony rumors of war proliferate in the Western media, reminiscent of the gladiatorial spirit of the ancient Roman Empire, in China the humanist spirit of the ancient Greeks is being revived in the Beijing Winter Olympics, that successor to the noble Greek pastime in which athletes from all Greek city-states would come together under the Olympic Truce to demonstrate their physical prowess in peaceful endeavors attempting to achieve the wreath of victory based on the highest achievements.

William Jones: All eyes on China during Winter Olympics