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Companies sponsoring Olympics enable the atrocities within China

As China prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, Beijing recently made a stunning announcement. Any athlete speaking out “against Chinese laws and regulations” will be subject to “punishment.” Beijing claims it’s an “innocent party,” but the threat to athletes is just the latest act by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—and proves it has much to hide. Unfortunately, some of America’s largest and most well-known companies seem content to help fund Beijing’s repressive, authoritarian regime. Since 2017, the CCP has “disappeared” more than a million Uyghurs and ...

NATO — Strategic asset or liability?

Is the territorial integrity of Ukraine a cause worth America’s fighting a war with Russia? No, it is not. And this is why President Joe Biden has declared that the U.S. will not become militarily involved should Russia invade Ukraine. Biden is saying that, no matter our sentiments, our vital interests dictate staying out of a Russia-Ukraine war. But why then does Secretary of State Antony Blinken continue to insist there is an “open door” for Ukraine to NATO membership — when that would require us to do what U.S. vital interests dictate we not do: fight a war with Russia for ...

New redistricting maps still not fair

The second effort to pass state legislative maps went about as well as the first. Republicans, who make up five of the seven members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission, voted for maps that seem to disproportionately favor that political party over the objections of Democrats, and the matter is again before the Ohio Supreme Court to decide its constitutionality. On the surface the maps look like an improvement from those rejected 4-3 by the court Jan. 12. The initial maps gave Republicans the advantage in 65 of 99 House districts and in 23 of 33 Senate districts. The court rejected ...

Do you know the risks?

Common sense. Did your parents ever tell you to use common sense? It’s something we’ve all been hearing about … negatively … in that no one seems to know much about it these days. Have you heard this recently? Common sense is “good sense and sound judgement to practical matters” (Oxford Languages); “sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts” (Merriam-Webster). “Common sense is the knowledge that all humans have … unspoken and unwritten” (bbvaopenmind.com). As in animals don’t play baseball or my mother is older, more ...

Healthy eating a challenge as you age

Thanks to breakthroughs in medicine and nutrition in recent years, we are living longer than ever before. But this increase in life expectancy also brings an increase in the number of diseases, injuries and impairments that affect older adults. With this in mind, we at the local Visiting Angels office in Salem have created this series of articles to keep our older population and their families informed and to offer some practical advice for meeting the challenges faced by seniors and those who care for them. ——— As many people age, eating healthy becomes a challenge for them ...

A collection of words

A collection of words happened. Bullying. Confidence. Regret. Consequences. Challenge. Obstacles. Overwhelm. These words seem so arbitrary. If someone was bullying you, would you recognize it as bullying? Or would you be scrambling to process the situation because surely it must be that you are misreading it? Why would someone bully you? Bullying happens at work, at school, in neighborhoods, in society, in social media, wherever there are human beings. It destroys confidence, unity, the fabric of a person, place, thing, group or idea. It prevents a person from achieving their ...