A SPECIAL ESSAY BY KIANA KARIMI — “Red sky at night, sailors’ delight./Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” The ancient rhyme holds as Russian forces signaled their descent with claps of roaring explosions and deadly sparks before first light on Thursday, February 24. Air sirens accompanied with malicious, global…
Full Article UKRAINE/RUSSIA: HEARTBREAKING PICTURES FROM THE ALL-SEEING ‘WARTOK’ CAMERA
CRISTINA PEDLER WRITES – At the annual gala dinner of the Pacific Century Institute (PCI) at the Beverly Hills Hotel, on Thursday night February 24, Loyola Marymount University was honored with PCI’s 2022 Institutional Building Bridges Award. The prestigious honor – previous recipients include the Council on Foreign Relations, the…
Full Article LOS ANGELES: LMU RECEIVES MAJOR INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION
PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES — Suppose I stopped working so hard to stay on the sunny optimistic side of the street but instead defected to the dark side and always anticipating the worst? Consider the figure of Vladimir Putin. Just try to stay optimistic after reading the depressing but richly…
Full Article THE PUTIN SHADOW: DARKENING VISIONS OF OPTIMISM
CLINICAL PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES — I look back in anger. There’s no other way emotionally to cope with the sense that, ever since the exit of the Clinton administration two decades ago, relations with China have gone from “the good and the bad” to mostly bad. It’s not that…
Full Article CHINA-US RELATIONS: MUDDLING THROUGH IS BETTER THAN BLOWING IT UP
SKYLER GALLARZAN WRITES — On April 14, 2021, the United States Senate voted on a bill that would speed up the review of reported attacks related to COVID-19, establish new methods in reporting these incidents and keep citizens safe. The bill’s name? The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. A report conducted…
Full Article ASIAN AMERICANS: THE SENATE TAKES ACTION AGAINST HATE CRIMES
On 16 April 2021, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng spoke with Ken Teizo Moritsugu of the Associated Press (AP) at an exclusive interview. The following is a transcript of the interview: Ken Teizo Moritsugu: First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to be with me…
Full Article CHINA RESPONDS: AN UNFAIR WESTERN MEDIA, A POORLY INFORMED PUBLIC
RYAN FRAZEE WRITES- How can we truly help the mentally ill? The Western world has undoubtedly revolutionized science and medicine. Yet the West has often overlooked and mishandled mental illness. In the United States in particular, the unfortunate tradition of stigmatizing psychiatric disorders such as Social Anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress…
Full Article CHINA: TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE PROVIDES ANSWERS TO MENTAL ILLNESS
ANDREW DAHI WRITES – Jeremy Lin. Five foot three. A freshman in high school. And a dream. A dream to play basketball at the highest level, on the biggest stage in the world, the NBA. By the time Lin, a Taiwanese-American, was a senior in high school, he had grown…
Full Article TAIWAN: LINSANITY AND THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION
KATHERINE PETERSON WRITES- ‘Slam Dunk,’ a 1990’s Japanese anime, tells the story of a high school basketball team from Shōhoku High. Critics believed the program would lack viewers, as editors claimed that “basketball was a taboo in this world.” But without manga viewers, the No. 8 draft pick and Japan…
Full Article JAPAN: SLAMMING THE OLD-SCHOOL BASKETBALL ‘TABOO’ OFF THE CULTURAL COURT
JOSEPH LITTAUA WRITES – It was a year ago when I was getting ready to go to mass on a Sunday morning when the news broke on Twitter about Kobe Bryant and a helicopter ride that seemed very ill-advised. I still remember it vividly, looking angrily at news outlets and…
Full Article KOBE BRYANT: A YEAR GONE, NEVER FORGET
DANICA CREAHAN WRITES — On Wednesday, Dec. 2, New Zealand’s government symbolically declared climate change an emergency through a motion tabled in parliament which recognized “the devastating impact that volatile and extreme weather will have on New Zealand and the wellbeing of New Zealanders, on our primary industries, water availability,…
Full Article NEW ZEALAND: GOVERNMENT DECLARES CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY, PLEDGES TO GO CARBON NEUTRAL BY 2025
MARK SCHREIBER OF THE JAPAN TIMES WRITES — Four years ago, Japan’s tabloids and weeklies reported on the contest between Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election with unrestrained gusto. By this writer’s count, the volume of U.S. election coverage in Japan’s weeklies…
Full Article JAPAN’S MEDIA AND U.S. ELECTION: TEA, SYMPATHY AND LOW PROFILE
ELLA KELLEHER WRITES — Lust, Caution (2007) made by the visionary director, Ang Lee, is an erotic espionage film1 that begins in 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The story of this film has been believed by many to be inspired by true events and the life of a Chinese…
Full Article LOOKING BACK: ‘LUST, CAUTION’ THE GREAT MOVIE
TOM PLATE WRITES — Change will come, it has to. But America’s hyper-confident commentariat has convinced itself that China-U.S. policy Democrat Joseph Biden, on track to become the 46th president of the United States, will be stuck in the cement of the New Coldness and would differ little from Trump’s.…
Full Article BIDEN AND CHINA: ‘SLEEPY’ … OR POSITIVELY RESTLESS?
ROBERT SONG WRITES (courtesy the Korea Times, Seoul) — As the world grapples with the virus originated in China, an ominous dark cloud of worsening U.S.-China relations looms over the global arena. From human rights abuses, to unfair trade practices, to unlawful militarization of the South China Sea to thousands of…
Full Article CHINA DEBATE: IS THE PROFESSOR A PANDA HUGGER?
From News Service Reports — No sooner had after China signaled it would impose new national-security laws on Hong Kong than markets throughout the world trembled. By early afternoon Friday in Hong Kong (22 May), the Hang Seng Index had lost 5.6%, with property, financial and infrastructure stocks retreating between…
Full Article HONG-KONG-WATCH: SHAKEN MARKETS