Five Rings in China: Events have begun and the opening ceremony is tonight as the Winter Olympics in Beijing get underway in a bubble of Covid-19 caution and political oppression.

  In a public show that was no coincidence, Russian President Vladimir Putin met and appeared in public with China’s President Xi Jinping, who pledged his support in the Kremlin’s facedown with the West over Ukraine. A joint statement said, “The sides oppose further enlargement of NATO and call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon its ideologized Cold War approaches.”

  Foreign spectators are not welcome and all the athletes, coaches, team officials, volunteers, and reporters will be required to eat, sleep, work and compete inside the closed compound and venues.

 No Covid, and no politics, please, unless officially approved. International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said, “If we are getting in the middle of tensions, disputes and confrontations of the political powers than we are putting the games at risk.”  

  One issue Bach and the Chinese have been avoiding is the case of Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis star who disappeared from public view for three weeks after accusing a top Communist Party official of forcing her into a sexual relationship. She later delivered what appeared to be an involuntary retraction.

   Our friend Steve Futterman, correspondent for CBS Radio, noted on Facebook that, “The CNN signal in my hotel room was suddenly lost when they were about to do a story on Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai.” 

  Bach said he will meet with Peng later this month, presumably not to draw negative attention to his Chinese hosts during the games. Historian Maura Elizabeth Cunningham writes in The NY Times, “Regardless of how many medals its Olympians garner, China is already ahead on the leaderboard. The party-state has proved it can stage a global event on its own terms.”

Zero Dark Thirty: The leader of the violent Islamic State terrorist organization set off a suicide bomb in his home at the outset of an American raid in northwestern Syria, killing himself and members of his family, including women and children, US authorities say.

  President Biden said he “made a choice to pursue a Special Forces raid at a much greater risk to our own people,” rather than bomb the entire building, but innocent people died anyway. No Americans were hurt.

  The target, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was believed to be responsible for a series of atrocities. He took over only days after his predecessor died the same way in 2019. 

  US special forces arriving yesterday in helicopters backed by jets, gunships, and drones attacked the house in a rebel-held corner of Syria, resulting in two hours of gunfire and explosions that jolted the town of Atmeh near the Turkish border. Parts of the top floor of cinderblock house were reduced to rubble. One American helicopter broke down and had to be destroyed.

  First responders who arrived afterwards reported that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women. Journalists described seeing scattered body parts.

  President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and senior national security aides watched a live video-feed of the operation from the White House Situation Room. Biden said in a statement that he ordered the raid to “protect the American people and our allies, and make the world a safer place.” 

  Maybe, but decapitating ISIS has never put the organization out of business.

Unfriending: Shares in Meta, the parent company of Facebook, dramatically dropped 26.4 percent yesterday, its worst one-day loss ever leading a market nose dive. Meta alone lost  more than $250 billion in market value. Founder Mark Zuckerberg is personally down about $25 billion.

  Facebook has lost viewers for the first time in its history, about half a million in the last three months of 2021. They’re having trouble competing with TikTok,  the short-video app. 

Going Postal: President Biden is in a fight with the Post Office over the service’s plans to renew its fleet with gas-powered rather than electric vehicles. 

  Rep. Gerald Connolly, the Virginia Democrat who heads the House subcommittee overseeing the United States Postal Service, called the decision to buy more gas-powered trucks “antediluvian” and described the current round of vehicle purchases  as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take electric vehicle technology to the next level with the second- largest vehicle fleet in America.”

 The Postal Service owns more than 231,000 vehicles, and an order for up to 165,000 trucks, would be the service’s biggest buy in thirty years.  Postmaster Louis DeJoy, an active Republican who was appointed by President Trump, says he doesn’t have the money in his budget for the electric vehicles. 

The Spin Rack: The Pentagon says it has exposed a Russian plan to make a video staging a fictional Ukrainian attack on Russian territory that would be used to justify a Russian invasion of Ukraine. It would be classic false flag propaganda. — The white former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who peppered the black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald with 16 bullets, is free from prison on good behavior after serving less than half his 3 ½ year sentence. Some community activists are now demanding that Van Dyke be charged with federal civil rights violations. 

A Bridge Too Far: The Dutch city of Rotterdam is backing off  an earlier report that it will partially dismantle the historic Koningshaven Bridge so a city-sized yacht being built for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos can transit downriver from its building site. 

  The bridge has a horizontal center span that lifts vertically on two towers to let boats and ships pass. It was rebuilt after being damaged in World War II and the Dutch are sentimental about it.

  In the world of Jeff Bezos, money buys anything and he’ll pay for what’s done to the bridge, if it happens. When complete, the 417-foot sailboat will be the largest sailing yacht in the world. The rich are different.  

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