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A Cultural Crossroads

Museum director and author Jack Lohman issues a warning about the future of our cultural institutions — and why they matter to increasingly cosmopolitan and multicultural societies: We have entered another Churchillian “period of danger,” but one of an unprecedented nature. We live in an age of profound cultural transition, a time in which the complexity of our multicultural world confronts us with challenges that have taken on an urgency and intensity quite unlike anything we have experienced in history. It is a time when hardly any of our public institutions are free from having to undergo deep soul-searching as

Findings: Valentine tunes

Greetings on Valentine’s day, with a new ditty from American singer-songwriter (and journalist) Andy Revkin. … and if a slight country tang is not your thing, here — just because — is Peggy Lee’s unforgettable jazz classic Fever, from the 1950s:  

Journalism matters: conflicts of interest

Journalists paid by industry or a partisan outfit are no longer “journalists.” They are practicing professional public relations. So where does that leave Canada’s Rex Murphy vis a vis his freelance jobs with Canada’s public broadcaster, as a commentator on the flagship National TV newscast, and as host of the radio call-in show Cross Country Checkup? Murphy, who has spent a lifetime in journalism, has had his role with the country’s public broadcaster questioned recently because of paid speaking gigs in the oil industry, where he’s known for pro-industry commentary and his record as a skeptic of climate-change science. Journalist Andrew

China and Taiwan, head to head

A historic meeting between China and Taiwan is taking place this week. Will it become a turning point in relations between the two countries? Jonathan Manthorpe, in considering the history and political factors, is doubtful. An excerpt of his new column: This week’s meeting between officials from the Chinese and Taiwanese governments is historic, but more for its symbolism than any prospect of dramatic outcomes. For Beijing the hope is that after eight years of improving economic ties, the talks are the beginning of a political process that will see the island nation of 23 million people absorbed into China

Massacre’s long trail leads to 10-Year Sentence

Thirty two years after 250 Guatemalan men, women and children were massacred, and with the efforts of authorities in at least three countries, Guatemala, the United States and Canada,  an American court sentence an former Guatemalan Army commander  Monday to 10 years in prison — for immigration crimes. Read the ProPublica report, Commander in Guatemala Massacre Sentenced to 10 Years, in F&O Dispatches,  and find ProPublica’s feature on an accidental victim of the massacre, Oscar Alfredo Ramírez Castañeda, here: Finding Oscar: Massacre, Memory and Justice in Guatemala. Former commander Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, who has held Guatemalan, American and Canadian citizenship,

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