Reading the Globe: A weekly digest of the most important news, ideas and culture around the world.

Mandating French in QuebecFurious controversy and public demonstrations have raged this week over Bill 96, one of the toughest pieces of legislation so far drafted in the efforts of francophones to make theirs the official language of Quebec. A May 16 article by Elizabeth Zogalis on the website Global News describes how many anglophones in Montreal and other parts of the province fear the ramifications of such a hardball approach to promoting the use of French in the workplace and public institutions.It may give readers a sense of the slant of Global News to note that you have go considerably further down, toward the end of the article, to find a differing view of Bill 96. Depp v. HeardJohnny Depp’s lawsuit over the alleged libel his ex-wife Amber Heard committed in a Washington Post op-ed piece continues this week, as does her countersuit, with Heard on the stand taking questions under cross-examination from Depp’s lawyer about their heated quarrels. One of the most harrowing parts of a trial filled with disquieting testimony was Heard’s claim that Depp committed sexual assault with a bottle. Jurors saw a photo of the bottle, which was intact despite Heard’s claim that she feared it was broken while inside her body.The gruesome testimony, along with Depp’s claims to have lost the tip of his middle finger when Heard threw a vodka bottle at him and to have hidden from her while she went on a rampage looking for him, is the subject of a May 17 article in the New York Post by Elizabeth Rosner and Snejana Farberov.California Judge Nixes Gender QuotasJust when you may have thought there was no hope for California, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis last week made a sensible decision striking down gender quotas that had forced corporations in the state to have a certain number of women on their boards. As Evan Symon details in a May 16 article for California Globe, the judge’s ruling finds that SB 826, which has been law in the Golden State for three years, violates the right to equal treatment and is therefore unconstitutional.Israel Defends ItselfAs terrorist attacks continue to endanger the civilians, military, and infrastructure of Israel, prime minister Naftali Bennett has pledged a massive response making use of helicopters and missiles, the Jerusalem Post reported on May 17. According to the Post’s article, calls for a tough response have grown in the aftermath of the killing of Noam Raz, a veteran counterterrorist operative, during an Israeli Defense Force operation in the city of Jenin last week, and another incident where IDF soldiers fatally shot a Palestinian man at a checkpoint when he ran at them with a knife, among other incidents. The article details how IDF soldiers have arrested numerous terror suspects in recent days. But clearly such actions have not gone nearly far enough to quell public fears of a sharp uptick in attacks and the need for the military to use its considerable resources to maintain order.

Censorship in ChinaCensorship in communist China extends further than some may realize. The repressive regime in Beijing seeks to extirpate not only speech and writing that contravene its dogmas, but even symbols that might give viewers the wrong idea.An article by Zachary Evans in National Review Online on May 2 details how China’s censors demanded that Sony cut the Statue of Liberty from the climax of Spider-Man: No Way Home. Evans notes that the monument is on view throughout the 20-minute climax. In the view of Chinese censors, it is unacceptable for viewers to take in, even subliminally, this image of freedom.The Times Gets It Wrong, AgainJesse Wegman of the New York Times Editorial Board believes that the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, is out of touch. The title of his May 3 opinion piece in the Times says it bluntly: “This Supreme Court Is Out of Step With Most Americans.”Wegman complains at some length that the court has become increasingly politicized over the years to the point where it resembles Congress more than a body undertaking the review of laws and policies in an impartial manner and assessing their constitutionality. Hence it is ironic that Wegman’s objections to the pending ruling on Roe v. Wade are political rather than legal in nature. He sounds like a political partisan, indeed like an activist, when he lashes out at the court for its stance on Roe v. Wade. The Passing of Kathy BoudinThe California Globe’s Evan Symon reported on May 2 that Kathy Boudin, the member of the Weather Underground who attained notoriety for her role in the deadly Brinks Robbery of October 1981, has died at age 78. Boudin is the mother of San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who faces possible recall in an election scheduled for June 7 as a consequence of the disastrous policy of “decarceration” he has foisted on the city, which has driven crime way up and eroded the quality of life in what many long considered to be one of the most desirable places in the world to live.The World Outside Maybe you remember that tender age when you were just barely old enough to begin to take trips by yourself. The literary journal Rosebud has just published its long-awaited 69th issue, and on page 140 of this issue, you will find my short story “The World Outside,” which is an account of a boy’s trip by train from Chicago through a swath of rural Michigan and back. It evokes midcentury America and draws its inspiration largely from Theodore Roethke’s poem “Night Journey.” In Roethke’s poem, the narrator describes riding in a Pullman car through an alternately bright and misty part of the upper Midwest and conveys the depth of his love for a land that holds out such natural beauty to the observer.I hope that “The World Outside” will evoke more wonder and terror on the reader’s part for what it prompts the reader to imagine than for what it actually shows. As readers of W.W. Jacobs’s classic story “The Monkey’s Paw” will affirm, this approach can be powerful indeed.

Succession at Fox NewsWhether or not you are a fan of Fox News, it is reasonable to wonder, as Ken Lacorte does in an April 12 article on National Review Online, what will happen to Fox News after the reign of owner Rupert Murdoch, 91, comes to an end.Lacorte finds cause for optimism in the person of the young and dynamic Lachlan Murdoch, who is executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation. The presumptive heir to the News Corporation empire recently gave a speech at the Centre for the Australian Way of Life that harshly criticized woke culture’s attacks on figures and symbols of America’s past and what he termed “the destructive rewriting of its history.”Descent Into HellCan Mayor Eric Adams reverse the decline of New York City?The headline of columnist Michael Goodwin’s piece in the New York Post on April 12 is “After latest bloodbath, time is running out for Hochul and Adams to save NYC.” The incident that shocked millions occurred on the morning of April 12 when a crazed lone wolf assailant set off smoke bombs and shot passengers on a Manhattan-bound N train in Brooklyn, wounding at least 29.Goodwin thinks that Adams, who ran on a tough law-and-order platform, has moved away from the promises he made while campaigning and has turned into something of an appeaser of the wing of the Democratic Party associated with militants like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If Adams continues to play this role, and to avoid being the kind of leader people sick of crime thought they were voting for, the rapid decline is likely to accelerate still further.Israel’s Third WayEver since February 24, the blue and yellow flags of Ukraine have been ubiquitous in the news and on social media. People around the world are eager to show their support as Ukraine suffers ever-intensifying battering from Russian forces, including a recent missile attack on a train depot that killed at least 50 civilians. As Patrick Kingsley notes in an April 10 article in the New York Times, Israel has made serious efforts including setting up a field hospital in Ukraine, sending humanitarian aid, and joining diplomatic efforts at the U.N. to sanction Russia.At the same time, Kingsley notes, Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, has largely refrained from demonizing Russia or blaming Russia for the crisis. The balancing act that Bennett has undertaken has drawn fierce criticism and charges of a conflict of interest. Golden State BuffooneryNow that ethnic studies courses are a requirement in California’s public schools, parents want to know what effect such courses are having on those subjected to them.An April 12 article by Katy Grimes on the website California Globe recounts how Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 101 into law last fall after having vetoed an earlier version, Bill 331, on the grounds of a lack of balance in the viewpoints and perspectives it would impose in California classrooms.

Schumer Hearts Dunst; Dune TriumphsPeople might assume that a politician who can get elected mayor of one of the nation’s largest cities, and win reelection four years later, is on the way to bigger things. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti won election in 2013 and then again in 2017. As Thomas Buckley details in a March 13 article in California Globe, Garcetti emerged during the 2020 presidential race as a vocal backer of Joe Biden, and expected something pretty important in return for his personal and political loyalty to the winning candidate. But the new administration passed over Garcetti for the role of Secretary of Transportation, a decision Buckley suggests may have had something to do with the severity of L.A.’s homeless problem. Wallace Slams Fox NewsThere is no love lost between Chris Wallace, the longtime host of Fox News Sunday, and his former employer. After nearly twenty years at Fox News, Wallace has moved to CNN, where he will host the new CNN+ streaming platform. An article in the New York Times on March 27 written by Michael N. Grynbaum quotes Wallace saying that working at Fox News became “unsustainable” as Wallace, a political centrist, increasingly heard views that he felt crossed the line from conservative opinion that he respected even if he did not always agree with it, into irresponsible stances on the supposed theft of the 2020 election and the hidden sources of the January 6 unrest in Washington. Wallace’s new gig at CNN+ will be an interview show whose acknowledged influences include such legends as Charlie Rose and Larry King.Amy Schumer Loves Kirsten DunstComedian Amy Schumer has issued a statement attempting to clarify that she meant no real disrespect to Kirsten Dunst, who was at the center of the second-most notorious incident at the 94thOscars Ceremony on Sunday, March 27.The incident provoked by Amy Schumer did not turn physical, but one can see how it easily might have. Schumer approached a couple of chairs on the floor of the event where Dunst sat with Jesse Plemons, her fiancé and co-star in the somber 2021 western film The Power of the Dog. She proceeded to call Dunst a “seat filler,” implying Dunst is a has-been B-list or C-list talent whom the organizers of the event brought on in a half-hearted and futile attempt to lend some prestige to the event and bump up its attendance numbers.A March 29 New York Post article by Leah Bitsky recounts Schumer’s weak attempt to explain away the incident by saying that the event was choreographed and affirming that she loves Kirsten Dunst.A Dream DeferredIn further Oscars news, Quebec’s most famous living filmmaker, Denis Villeneuve, has a good deal to feel proud of at this time. His visually impressive, mega-budget opus Dune won awards in no fewer than six categories, including those for visual effects, cinematography, production design, editing, sound, and score. Some directors would no doubt be awestruck at winning the most coveted award in just one of these categories, let alone six. But a March 28 article by Brendan Kelly in the Montreal Gazette notes that Dune did not win in the category of best picture. And not only did Villeneuve not win the award for best director, but he did not even receive a nomination in this category, something that could surely be a letdown at this point in his career, when you might think that Villeneuve is at the very top of his game.

The Israeli Path to PeaceThere may be hope. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, have been speaking on a regular basis since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. On March 8, Zelensky personally thanked Bennett for intervening in the conflict and trying to help bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. And if Bennett is not quite Talleyrand, he does appear to have brought diplomatic skills of a very high order to the table.An article in the Jerusalem Post on March 8 describes Bennett as an intermediary who has been “passing messages” between Russia and Ukraine without explicitly identifying himself with one side or the other.The Jerusalem Post story presents Bennett as someone highly knowledgeable about the current state of the conflict and the chances for reconciliation as Russia grows more amenable to the demilitarization of certain parts of Ukraine rather than the entire country, and Ukraine backs down a bit from its insistence on immediate unconditional entry into NATO, a development that would only further stoke Russia’s fear and alarm about the encroachment of hostile powers around its borders.An Artist’s PlightA February 19 article by Ken Kurson in Fine Art Globe, “Cuban Curator Anamely Ramos Gonzalez Stranded in Miami,” details how staff at Miami International Airport, seemingly at the behest of the Cuban regime, barred Ms. Ramos from getting on an American Airlines flight bound for Cuba. Kurson’s piece cites a Miami Herald article stating that typically, when Cuban authorities deny someone entry to the island nation, it happens on the ground in Cuba, and not at a U.S. airport.When asked whether she fears that the attention given her case might put her in danger, Ramos said that, on the contrary, she feels safer in the spotlight.A Terrorist’s Death Sentence ReimposedOn March 4, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in a 6-3 ruling to reinstate the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving member of the pair of brothers who set off two bombs at the Boston Marathon in 2013, killing three people and injuring hundreds, and then went on a rampage in the course of which they murdered a young MIT police officer and caused still more chaos, injuries, and destruction in the Boston area.An article in National Review published shortly after the ruling details the reasoning put to use by Justice Clarence Thomas, who spoke for the majority when stating that the defendant had received a fair trial before an impartial jury as required under the Sixth Amendment.Defending Academic Freedom, in the New York Times?On March 7 the New York Times published a guest essay by Emma Camp, a senior at the University of Virginia, entitled “I Came to College Eager to Debate. I Found Self-Censorship Instead.” Some students are so terrified of social repercussions—and of getting a lower grade for speaking out in class—that they choose to clam up no matter how wrong they may find the viewpoint of a professor or a fellow student to be.

Justice for HalynaMatt Hutchins, the widower of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins has moved ahead with a wrongful death lawsuit against Alec Baldwin and others involved with the film. During the widely covered news conference on Tuesday, attorneys for Matt Hutchins made a number of points. The Los Angeles Times quotes attorney Brian Panish stating, “There are many people culpable, but Mr. Baldwin was the person holding the weapon.”Ditching the Vaccine PassportAmid mounting public frustration and Covid-19 weariness, not to mention the trucker protests that have convulsed Ottawa and made headlines around the world, Quebec’s health minister, Christian Dubé, announced on Tuesday that the province will soon do away with the vaccine passports that have been necessary to shop and dine in public and have made life during the pandemic even more trying and difficult for millions of people. The Montreal Gazette quoted the health minister saying that he has taken this step because it makes sense to do so now, given the Covid-19 numbers and the state of public health in the province, and not simply in response to political pressures.Sorry, RoseFor fans of film star Rose McGowan and sympathizers with #MeToo, it must be highly frustrating to learn that a federal judge has thrown out McGowan’s lawsuit alleging that Harvey Weinstein engaged in a pattern of behavior that crossed the line into racketeering in his efforts to keep her quiet about his unwanted sexual advances.According to an Associated Press story by Andrew Dalton on February 14, federal judge Otis D. Wright II tossed out the suit on a technicality, noting that McGowan had failed to meet filing deadlines even though the court had extended the deadlines in an effort to accommodate her.Put Your Money Where Your Mouth IsDo progressives really wear masks and socially distance when they have any choice in the matter? Evan Symon carries on his excellent coverage of the California political scene with a February 14 piece in the California Globe on the flouting of Covid-19 rules and protocols by members of the very political elite that has been so self-righteous about enforcing such rules.The article details how, at Super Bowl LVI which took place at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Sunday, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti was one of a number of public officials and celebrities captured on video as they freely ignored mask and social distancing protocols. Charlize Theron and Sean Penn also make notable appearances in the video, which has received more than 1.4 million views.

Houthi rebels, Soros funding, Holocaust portrayals and Quebec heavy handednessMany observers of Israel’s continuing efforts to strengthen ties with the region reacted with dismay to the news that Houthi rebels in Yemen had fired a missile in an apparent attempt to disrupt Israeli president Israel Herzog’s official visit to the United Arab Emirates.According to a January 30 Politico report, the UAE intercepted the missile fired by the rebels and it does not appear to have claimed any lives or to have disrupted President Herzog’s meeting with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.The same cannot be said of an attack by the rebels on a fuel station two weeks previously that killed three people and injured six people.Practice What You PreachA report by Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher that appeared in the New York Times on January 29 is entitled “Democrats Decried Dark Money. Then They Won With It in 2020.” The article does an excellent job of laying bare the hypocrisy on display here. It mentions the left’s professed aversion to the role of corporations in politics in the Citizens United case. It acknowledges the increasing role, in the dark money sinkhole, of megadonors such as George Soros. But the article could perhaps have gone even a bit further and frankly acknowledged that the party that casts itself as the party of voting rights and economic populism, favoring the increased participation of the disadvantaged members of our society, has increasingly turned into the vehicle and tool of the most powerful and superrich elites.Intellectual Freedom in TennesseeOn January 27, the website Book and Film Globe ran a piece by editor Neal Pollack entitled “The Maus That Roared: Tennessee school board bans Art Spiegelman’s book just in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day.” Maus, an account of the Holocaust making use of animals as its characters, is widely considered a powerful and revolutionary work of literature, one that brings home all the horror of the Holocaust in a wrenching manner, but the school board evidently felt that the profanity and depictions of violence in the graphic novel, including the murder of children, make Maus unsuitable for school libraries and curricula.Punishing the SkepticsIt is one thing to believe in the wisdom of getting fully vaccinated against Covid-19. It is another matter to enact punitive measures against those who, for one reason or another, have not received vaccinations. The province of Quebec, as BBC News reported on January 11, has deemed the latter course of action to be necessary. Quebec’s premier, François Legault, has announced that Quebec will slap as-yet unspecified fines on the roughly 12.8% of the province’s population who are still unvaccinated. The tough new measure, as stated above, makes Quebec an outlier among Canada’s provinces. On the one hand, you have to admire Quebec for going its own way and not receiving dictates from Ottawa about how to handle urgent public health matters. It is well for the province to asset its independence from a confederation that continually threatens to subsume its distinct cultural and linguistic identity.

The Future of the UnionThe Economist’s January 1 issue features a bold lead editorial, entitled “Walking away,” about the perceived fragility of democracy in America one year out from the trauma of the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. It sounds a dire note about the growing polarization in the country and the tendency of members of either major political party to view the other side with suspicion and fear.Eric Adams Becomes MayorMany people concerned about the crime surge in New York City have welcomed new mayor Eric Adams, a former cop who did not mince words during the electoral race about the problems facing the city and the tough measures needed to turn things around. This past weekend, a robber at a Burger King in East Harlem fatally shot a 19-year-old cashier who had recently expressed concerns to management about her safety because of the lateness of her shift and the number of homeless people who gathered on the sidewalk outside, according to a January 9 report in the New York Post. This horrible incident comes on the heels of other high-profile crimes including the murder of a Columbia University graduate student from Italy and the assault and robbery of a young Thai model on a 14thStreet subway platform.One would like to think that the city really will take a new direction under Mayor Adams, who repudiates the weak, permissive stance of failed mayor Bill de Blasio. Many of us still believe in Adams, even though he has defended one of his recent top-level appointments in a curious manner. An article by Sam Raskin appearing in the New York Post on January 9 details how Mayor Adams defended the choice of his brother, former New York cop Bernard Adams, to serve as deputy NYPD commissioner.The Radioactive Road Not Taken in VietnamAll too often the problems of the present become magnified and we lose perspective and imagine that we today face crises unequalled in history. An article by Erik Villard in the February 2022 issue of Vietnam magazine, entitled “Did the U.S. consider using nukes?”, looks into that question and says that, yes, no fewer than three U.S. presidents gave consideration to the use of tactical nuclear weapons to prevent North Vietnamese forces from overrunning key objectives.Villard’s article emphasizes the consideration given to political fallout, but it goes without saying that any sensible president would do everything in his power to prevent the use of nuclear weapons and to signal to the world that their use would be unacceptable and unconscionable. Public opinion is an important but far from the sole issue here. The use of nukes in Vietnam would have upped the ante in conflicts worldwide to a point where the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of lives and the spread of radiation and devastation of the natural environment would come not to seem extraordinary at all.How the Mayans LivedOur understanding of the civilization and way of life of the Mayans takes another step forward with the publication of a short but intriguing article, “New Neighbors,” by Marley Brown in the January/February issue of Archaeology magazine.The article is a reminder of the splendor and sophistication, as well as the frequent aggression and conquest, characterizing one of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic ancient civilizations.

Gotham in DeclineThose of us who grew up in New York City in the 1980s have troubling memories of a grimy, graffiti-ridden urban landscape where danger was a part of everyday life and you could not walk the streets without anticipating the possibility of becoming a victim of harassment or worse.The election of Rudolph Giuliani in the 1993 mayoral race drew howls of outrage from the left, but under Giuliani, and his police commissioner William Bratton, the city at last began to make steps to becoming slightly more civilized and habitable. The tough approach continued under Michael Bloomberg, but it came to an abrupt end under Bill de Blasio, who rejected tough policing as unfair to minorities in New York. De Blasio did not seem to understand or care that while crime and disorder affected almost everyone, those who benefited most from a decline in the homicide rate were precisely the city’s racial minorities.Now, at the end of De Blasio’s awful tenure, incidents happen every day that cannot fail to summon memories of the 1980s.Germany’s Man of the HourThe Economist of December 11-17 features a profile of Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz. The article, “Enter the Quiet Man,” presents Scholz as a moderate pragmatist with a strong work ethic. According to the article, some of Scholz’s fellow Social Democrats find him a bit too moderate, far from the politician who would be needed to spearhead a reenergized European left.Or at least that was the case until the Covid pandemic came along, the article tells us. On North Korea Another article in The Economist, Sunflower state ,” presents the findings of researchers from the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, an organization based in Seoul. With neither the freedom to choose between a vocation and spending time with family, nor the competitive salaries that they might be earning in western countries, men in North Korea may come to feel something the class-tinged resentment that finally turns one of the protagonists of Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite homicidal. But overthrowing a totalitarian regime by force from the inside is arguably an even more doomed proposition than acting out a revenge fantasy against a callous and snooty upper-class family.On Joan DidionThe website Book and Film Globe, edited by Neal Pollack, features my thoughts on the passing of Joan Didion, the pioneering and prolific essayist, memoirist, critic, and novelist who showed us all how porous the borders between fiction and nonfiction narrative really are. To read Didion is to see that there is no reason an account of a trip to El Salvador, a Doors rehearsal, a Bay Area courtroom during a trial of Black Panthers accused of murder, or a stint in New York City during a tender and impressionable time of life cannot have all the passion, drive, and power of riveting fiction. Since Didion’s passing on Thursday, December 23, tributes have come pouring in from critics, journalists, editors, and publishers all over the world, and I tried in my Book and Film Globe piece to convey at least some sense of why readers are so passionate about the late celebrity.

Alec Baldwin Blames Everyone But HimselfThe shocking news that Alec Baldwin shot dead the cinematographer on the set of a film on October 21 has clearly been hard for Baldwin to digest. There can be no doubt as to the unintentional nature of the fatal shooting and the sincerity of Baldwin’s wish that this terrible unexpected event had never happened. In his relatively few photo-ops and interviews since the death of Halyna Hutchins, Baldwin appears genuinely distraught and remorseful, as would anyone who is not psychotic. But that does not mean that Baldwin’s conduct, and his legal maneuverings, in the time since that awful incident have set a standard of exemplary conduct. Baldwin seems determined not to own the consequences of the lack of safety and industry-wide protocol for which he bore ultimate responsibility. Real IntoleranceThe Economist’s November 6 issue contains an incisive article, “Spilling over,” on a wave of horrific violence in Bangladesh driven largely by sectarian hatred. It details how the alleged discovery of a copy of the Koran wedged under the feet of a Hindu idol sparked a series of vicious attacks on Hindus and other religious minorities in the 90% Muslim country. The article describes how a crowd of 10,000 Muslims gathered outside the mosque in Dhaka chanting “Hang the culprits” and how rioters inspired by sectarian fervor and a desire to avenge the alleged desecration attacked Hindus and seized their property, leaving at least three dead, including a 62-year-old man, Dilip Das, who had set out to worship in the Hindu temple in Cumilla in eastern Bangladesh.According to the article, Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, did not condemn the violence unequivocally but rather blamed it on the treatment that Muslims have received in India. The article notes that Muslims living in that nation are not entirely without legitimate grievances, given that the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi recently implemented a streamlined path to citizenship for refugees, excluding those who happen to be Muslim, and that the ruling party has labeled Muslims from the border regions of India “infiltrators.” Violence against Muslims in India, the article notes, quickly followed the wave of anti-Hindu attacks.Ed Shames, RIPColonel Ed Shames, one of the last surviving members of the famed Band of Brothers who fought heroically in the Second World War, died on December 3 at the age of 99. Shames was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and lived a good part of his life in the Hampton Roads area, save for military training and preparations that took him to a number of places in the U.S. and abroad, including Petersburg, Virginia, Toccoa, Georgia, and England during the run-up to D-Day. According to his Legacy.com obituary, Shames was the first member of the 101st to enter the Dachau concentration camp, and he entered and took cognac from Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest headquarters, later using the cognac in a toast at the bar mitzvah of his eldest son.

On November 24, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving, a man walks into the terminal at Portland International Airport. Giving his name as Dan Cooper, he pays with cash for a seat on a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727 jet scheduled to make the quick flight from Portland up to Seattle.Thus begins one of the strangest and most fascinating crimes in American history, a crime that remains unsolved til this day.In this special edition of Reading the Globe, AudioHopper presents “The D.B. Cooper Mystery at 50.”Michael Washburn takes us deep into a true crime thriller in which a pseudonymous man extorted $200,000 in ransom and parachuted into thin air over southwestern Washington State. He was never conclusively spotted again, dead or alive. After interviewing nearly 1000 suspects over 30 years, the crime remains, according to New York magazine, “the only skyjacking in the world that has gone unsolved.”In this special feature featuring archival audio, much of the record is corrected, including the legend that “Cooper” left nothing behind. In fact, he did—his clip-on tie (and tie pin), among other items. The author also makes a powerful case that the skyjacker may have been Canadian.Was he eaten? Where’s the parachute? How did a young boy find $3000 of the ransom money? Why are some of the possible subjects buying cars with cash and making death-bed confessions? What the hell happened?At 50, the case still fascinates all true-crime junkies. Washburn, an expert on the case, presents a reasoned analysis of every possible known subject and presents a compelling case for one of them being the skyjacker. It’s the perfect holiday listen.

Zemmour RisingOne of the most widely reported phenomena on the French political scene is the rise in opinion polls of Éric Zemmour, who looks set to rival the incumbent president, Emmanuel Macron, in next April’s election. While Zemmour has decided views on many issues, he opposes unchecked immigration above all as an existential threat to France.Zemmour has long been a fringe figure. Some know him as an essayist who states in a polemical form certain of the themes, ideas, and messages found in the work of the enfant terrible of French letters, Michel Houellebecq.An article by Angelique Chrisafis in theGuardian Weekly’s October 15 edition, “From pundit to president? The far-right rise of Eric Zemmour,” quotes two sources who are fiercely hostile to Zemmour. Stanford University Professor Cécile Alduy tells the Guardian that Zemmour’s message is not new but that it is quite unprecedented for someone espousing such views to gain the platform that Zemmour has acquired. The article also quotes French comedian Yassine Belattar calling Zemmour a provocateur and making the questionable assertion that never before in history has racism run so high.Radical Fist-Pumping as EducationAn article in the Economist’s October 23 issue, entitled “Race and class,” (paywalled) denounces the moves that eight U.S. states have made to ban critical race theory from public school curricula, and makes a case for ethnic studies lessons. The Economist details how San Francisco’s school district launched an ethnic studies pilot program in 2010-2011, relying heavily on faculty of San Francisco State University. The article cites findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that purport to show that the implementation of ethnic studies curricula in San Francisco schools has had positive effects. The same Economist article reports findings of Sade Bonilla of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and her colleagues purporting to show that the program boosted high-school attendance by six to seven percentage points and also had an effect on graduation rates. But perhaps the most significant finding reported in the article is the UMass researchers’ claim of a higher GPA for those who have enrolled in ethnic studies courses.The radical educators have the last laugh. The Economist notes that California plans to make ethnic studies a requirement for graduation throughout the state by 2030.Books Are BurningWhen published in 1953, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 stood as a warning about where consumerism, instant gratification, and anti-intellectualism might lead. It depicts a dystopia where corps of firemen make the rounds, not putting out fires but gathering whatever books they can find and setting them ablaze. From our vantage point in 2021, the awful truth is that Fahrenheit 451 is a more literal prophecy than readers, critics, and maybe even the novel’s own author believed it to be. Yes, ideologues and fanatics are burning books. One example cited in my recent review for Book and Film Globe is a book-burning organized in Ontario in 2019 as part of a supposed effort at reconciliation with indigenous people who have been the victim of racist stereotyping in the past. And more...

Whither the European Union?The reasons for voting in favor of the 2016 Brexit were many and varied, but with some hindsight, it is hard to deny that voters frustrated with the workings of the E.U. had a basis for their grievances. Just look at the gas crisis that is making life in the E.U. unbearable for millions of people.An article by Laurence Norman in the Wall Street Journal’s October 14 edition, “Gas Crisis Prompts Fresh Proposals from E.U.,” quotes energy commissioner Kadri Simson calling the crisis an unusual situation and maintaining that E.U. energy policies over the last 20 years have worked well. But the article details how the European Commission is grasping for solutions to deal with the tripling of wholesale gas prices within E.U. borders and the concomitant spike in inflation, which jeopardizes the economic recovery everyone has been hoping for as the continent tries to move on from the Covid pandemic.A New Direction for New YorkMayoral candidate Eric Adams once again has refused to mince words or tiptoe around an issue of growing concern to New Yorkers: the scourge of shoplifting that has left entire shelves bare in some stores, drugstores in particular, and about the need to back law enforcement unequivocally, a brave stance to take in this age of rabid anti-police activism and hysterical rhetoric.An article in the New York Post on October 14, “Mayoral hopeful Eric Adams talks tough against NYC shoplifting spike,” quotes Adams saying that once he takes office, his administration will adopt an aggressive stance toward the crime wave plaguing New York. He plans to visit precincts in person and reiterate his strong support for the police. Adams spoke partly in response to public concerns aroused by repeat offenders like the so-called Man of Steal, who police have arrested no fewer than 57 times this year, including 46 arrests for retail theft.Curtains for DurstRobert Durst, the real estate heir suspected in crimes that provided tabloid fodder and inspired both a feature film and a six-part HBO documentary, is unlikely ever to be a free man again. Evan Symon’s October 15 article in The California Globe, “Robert Durst Receives Life Sentence in LA Superior Court Ruling,” details the outcome of a lengthy proceeding complicated by the Covid pandemic and concerns about the health of the wheelchair-bound 78-year-old defendant. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark Windham has sentenced Durst to spend the remainder of his life in prison, with no chance of parole, for the murder of Susan Berman, whose body police found in her Benedict Canyon home on December 24, 2000. Evidence implicating Durst in the crime included letters with the same misspellings that Durst had made in other correspondence. Durst is also on camera in the HBO documentary confessing to having committed murders. And more...

Ben & Jerry’s is back in the news again, carrying on a long campaign in favor of progressive social issues and a tactic of withholding or withdrawing its ice cream from a market as a form of protest against what founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield see as injustice in the country, province, or territory in question. Last month, in what it meant to be a bold statement against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, the company announced that it would cease selling its products in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, though not in Israel as a whole.One of the last places one would expect to find criticism of Ben & Jerry’s is in the pages of the almost monochromatically liberal New York Times. But one of the paper’s very few idiosyncratic voices, Bret Stephens, wrote a column on August 11 that questions how much of a sacrifice Ben & Jerry’s is really making, from a business standpoint, given the relatively minuscule market for its ice cream in the places in question or indeed in Israel as a whole.Has Andrew Cuomo’s career really come to an end? The New York governor has announced his resignation, after numerous allegations of sexual harassment came to light for which he faces likely prosecution and a ban against running for state office. As might be expected, the loss of a pillar of New York State’s powerful and entrenched Democratic establishment produced a spate of reactions, often depending on people’s political affiliations, but it is notable that liberals and progressives did not rush to defend the disgraced governor and many of them praised his resignation as the right thing to do.In an editorial entitled “End of the road,” the liberal New York Daily News says that Cuomo has made the right move, while calling this a sad moment and sternly warning people not to rejoice over the derailment of a political enemy’s career, given the vast amount of difficult work that lies ahead for his successors. The points are well taken, but one cannot help wondering whether the News’s editorial might have a slightly different tone if the career of a prominent conservative politician had just come to such a dramatic and disgraceful end. But an article by Michael Gartland in the same edition of the Daily News, “’22 race wide open after Andy shocker,” examines the huge field of potential candidates in next year’s gubernatorial election, and does not discount the possibility, however remote, that a chastened Cuomo may try for a comeback. And more...

Japan’s New LeaderThe Economist magazine continues its usually astute and detailed coverage of the Japanese political scene with an article about the country’s new prime minister, Kishida Fumio, who was recently elected president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Fumio has taken the reins of office from Yoshihide Suga, an unpopular leader who announced last month that he would not seek reelection as leader of his party. Fumio’s record in Japanese politics and international diplomacy is uneven. As foreign minister under prime minister Shinzo Abe in the last decade, Fumio drank vodka with Russian diplomat Sergei Lavrov, but the somewhat forced conviviality did not achieve the hoped-for breakthrough in Russian-Japanese relations. Fumio also organized a visit by then-U.S. president Barack Obama to his hometown of Hiroshima and tried to work out an agreement whereby Japan would compensate South Korean women whom the Japanese military forced into sexual slavery during the Second World War. No such deal ever came about, but the Economist’s article blames a change of government in South Korea rather than any failure on Fumio’s part.The New Republic Slams TuckerThe New Republic’s October issue features a cover story highly critical of Fox News host Tucker Carlson.Before getting into the content of this piece, it is worth noting that there was a time well within living memory when TNR was popular among some conservatives. Not just neoconservatives, who shared its concern for Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East, but even social conservatives who found some of its in-depth articles in the 1990s to be quite trenchant. The examples spring to mind of Heather Mac Donald’s scathing piece on diversity training programs that enriched those who conducted them while bullying and ostracizing the employees who had to undergo them, and Stephanie Guttmann’s cover story debunking the politically correct hype about a gender-integrated military and exposing the serious problems that integration has caused. TNR also blasted the incompetence and corruption of the police force in Washington, D.C., and the force’s bungling of murder cases.Since the magazine’s acquisition by Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes and its sale in 2016 to Win McCormack, a once-lively and eclectic publication has grown much more consistently left-wing. For a magazine trying to tilt the country in a more progressive direction, Fox News host Carlson, one of the most outspoken and prominent conservative commentators on the planet, is an obvious target.Haruki Murakami Library Opens in TokyoFinally, returning to Japan, we’ve got a story by yours truly on Book and Film Globe chronicles the official opening of the Waseda International House of Literature in Tokyo. One of the most admired writers in Japan today, Haruki Murakami, is also the impetus behind the launch of an institution that is sure to be popular in a Covid-wracked nation nursing its wounded pride after the letdown of the 2021 Olympics. Amid the pandemic, the 72-year-old Murakami has emerged as one of his country’s most candid and empathic public figures, and his bold move is a salve to a nation in tormented times. And more...

The nation of Morocco, which recently established closer diplomatic and economic ties with Israel and began welcoming direct Israir and El Al flights in Marrakech in July in accordance with a pact the two nations signed last year as part of the Abraham Accords, looks poised to take the next big step in the strengthening of its ties with the West. Morocco World News reported on September 26 on the plans that Simon Morrish, the founder and CEO of Xlinks, has been developing to construct the longest power cable in the world, extending 3,800 kilometers underwater from wind and solar energy generators in the Guelmin Oued-Noun region roughly in the middle of Morocco to the U.K., where, Morrish claims, it will provide power to perhaps seven million homes.The tiny Central Pacific island nation of Nauru, which has roughly 12,000 residents and no official capital, has long been a dumping ground for refugees seeking entry to Australia. Now, as the Guardian has reported in its edition of September 24, Australia has reached a deal with Nauru for the indefinite prolongation of the detention center, where conditions are reportedly ghastly and human rights abuses abound.Some companies just can’t stay out of trouble. Evan Symon’s September 25 report in the California Globe details how the Shasta County District Attorney’s office has charged PG&E with 11 felonies, including four counts of manslaughter, in the aftermath of the catastrophe known as the Zogg Fire. PG&E only just emerged from bankruptcy resulting from having to pay $13.5 billion to the victims of a 2018 fire, and that is but one of the higher-profile legal troubles to have beset the utility in recent years.Sometimes tales of heroism are absurdly inflated. At other times, the sacrifices of past generations can come to seem all the more awe-inspiring when you realize just how inadequate were the resources entrusted to them given the challenges they faced. Jon Diamond’s article in the October 2021 issue of World War II History magazine, “Two Battles at Singapore’s Bukit Timah,” situates the reader in a time in place, Singapore in the early months of 1942, when desperate British, Australian, Dutch, and Indian troops tried to block the lightning moves of the Japanese army down the Malay peninsula and into Singapore, which ultimately fell to the forces of the wily and ruthless Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita on February 15, 1942, but not without a fight. And more...

The Senate, by a vote of 50 to 49, conferred its approval on a $3.5 trillion budget resolution that paves the way for the hugely ambitious economic package Biden has long promised to make a reality. As Clare Foran and Ali Zaslev detail in article on CNN, Senate Democrats cast their vote in favor of the package after a long series of so-called amendment votes. It is now up to the House to pass the budget resolution. Pillars of the resolution include massive spending on infrastructure, job creation, aid to families, and environmental programs. It is easily one of the most sweeping and ambitious domestic spending programs in American history, establishing a Civilian Climate Corps, implementing universal pre-K for three- and four-year-olds, and making community college tuition free for two years, among other provisions. It appears that in the view of CNN’s authors, the liberal Democrat viewpoint is the only one that truly matters here. This package is what “people” want. Only fuddy-duddies with eccentric views would stop and ask what part of the Constitution says that government is to pay for community college or universal pre-K. Not very many people today would cite or even know the text of the Tenth Amendment, which explicitly delimits the functions and prerogatives of the federal government and stipulates that any powers not specifically granted to it under the Constitution belong to the states, or the people. Who cares about such nit-picking legal and Constitutional issues when the mobs to which Democrat politicians are beholden are clamoring for more of this and more of that. The Constitution is just a scrap of paper written by dead white men.Americans can never get enough of true crime, and the persistence of the Covid pandemic has not denied them the spectacle of seeing the notorious Robert Durst, heir to the Durst real estate fortune, put on trial in Los Angeles for the murder of friend Susan Berman. An August 10 Reuters article reminds readers how police in 2000 found the body of 55-year-old Berman in her Beverly Hills home shortly after the reopening of an investigation into the disappearance and presumed murder of Durst’s wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst, in 1982. Durst is also the prime suspect in the killing of Morris Black, a neighbor in Texas, in 2001.The article dusts off the theory that Durst wanted Berman out of the picture because of what she might have been able to tell police about the fate of Kathleen. The Reuters article details how Durst’s attorneys have taken a somewhat unusual step in putting the wheelchair-bound 78-year-old, who suffers from many ailments including bladder and esophageal cancer, kidney disease, high blood pressure, neuropathy, and osteoporosis, on the stand to answer tough and probing questions about his alleged role in Berman’s death. And more...

The United States and Indonesia are building a formidable alliance, driven largely by the two nations’ shared antipathy toward the Chinese government’s designs on the South China Sea and more general concerns about China’s role in the region. An August 3 Reuters report detailed the marked success of Tuesday’s meeting in Washington between U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi. The two officials reportedly spoke at length about a strategic partnership designed to counteract China’s longstanding territorial ambitions in the waterways north and east of Indonesia and also to continue a joint response to the Covid-19 crisis. In the last year and a half, the U.S. has emerged as one of Indonesia’s most generous benefactors in the fight against Covid, donating eight million vaccine doses to the Asian nation.Horror author Cynthia Pelayo is the latest in the seemingly endless parade of victims of cancel culture. As Rachel Llewellyn has reported in an article on the website Book and Film Globe on August 2, Pelayo planned to follow up her hit police procedural Children of Chicago with an anthology of writings entitled Cops vs. Monsters. In an age when so many progressives loathe and seek to disrupt and defund the police, that’s a rather unfortunate title. To the woke mob, cops are monsters. Not some of them, but all of them. The very people who never tire of warning others about the evils of stereotyping and generalizations joyously engage in the same and are quick to lash out at anyone seen as sympathetic to those who don uniforms and badges and put their lives on the line to protect the public. Online rage against Pelayo’s editorship of Cops vs. Monsters led her to abandon the project in haste and cancel her online accounts.As the trial of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes looks set finally get underway, with July selection scheduled for the end of August, speculation abounds about what strategies the prosecution and the defense will put to use. Elizabeth Holmes is the defendant who, as a nineteen-year-old Stanford dropout, launched Theranos back in 2003 with extravagant claims about her company’s potential to revolutionize the medical and startup fields. And more...

One of the more encouraging pieces of news this week is the inauguration of direct flights between Israel and Morocco, undertaken in accordance with the joint declaration that the two nations signed on December 22 of last year as part of the breakthrough Abraham Accords. Morocco World News reported on July 26 that the arrival of two Israir and El Al flights in Marrakech this past weekend was something of a joyous event. Bands specializing in music alluding to folk tales and legends of Morocco turned out to fete the hundreds of tourists and visitors, and the U.S. State Department sent out a positive tweet about the event.We have heard over and over that the eruption of Covid-19 around the world has shown us all how unprepared we were for the advent of a highly contagious disease. But the real lesson of the past year and a half may be just how precarious are personal liberties in the supposedly free nations of the Western world and how abruptly and arbitrarily officials may revoke those freedoms with little or no statutory basis and without the consent of those who elected them. Nowhere is this lesson more evident than in Australia, where people are enduring restrictions on their movements and activities that make a dystopian fantasy like Orwell’s 1984 seem tame. As the Economist reports in its issue of July 24, the state of Victoria has enacted its fifth lockdown, and the state of South Australia has issued stay-at-home orders, in response to outbreaks and infections. The Economist’s figures indicate that more than half of a population of 25 million people, the population of an entire continent, are now under lockdown. Any honest and balanced account of Australia’s lockdowns ought to mention what has happened in recent days. As BBC News reported early this week, protestors bearing signs with messages like “Emergency SOS Free Australia” have turned out by the thousands in Sydney, and critics of lockdowns have also organized events in Brisbane and Melbourne. New South Wales premier Berejiklian has said protestors should be ashamed, but, as Californians know all too well, it is easy for officials or the governor of a state to denounce people for their unwillingness to live under restrictions from which politicians themselves are often exempt.As the identities of the last unnamed victims of the catastrophic collapse of a 136-unit condominium tower in Surfside, Florida, on June 24 at last come to light, the reaction to this horrible event focuses on the failures of structural maintenance and upkeep that allowed the disaster to happen. An expose in the New York Times published on June 26 and since updated has outlined in detail how consultant Frank Morabito in a 2018 report analyzed extensive water damage and cracking throughout the complex that should have raised flags immediately about the unsafe conditions prevailing at Champlain Towers South and spurred the building’s management to take action. The Times quotes a statement from Morabito Consulting: “Among other things, our report detailed significant cracks and breaks in the concrete, which required repairs to ensure the safety of the residents and the public.” And more...

When people hear the term voter suppression, they are likely to think of efforts led by Republicans in Georgia and other states to impose strict voter ID requirements on all who wish to take part in the political process. But in California, recent actions by Secretary of State Shirley Weber have given new meaning to voter suppression. To put it more precisely, Weber may have severely limited the choices that voters have by excluding candidate Larry Elder from the ballot in the recall election scheduled for September14.As detailed in a report by Katy Grimes in California Globe on July 20, Weber has attempted to kick Elder off the ballot on the grounds that redactions on the tax returns released by Elder went beyond what a candidate may legally redact. Elder has sued to remain on the ballot. UPDATE: As reported by California Globe, on Wednesday evening, Judge Laurie M. Earl ruled in Elder’s favor. “I don’t find Mr. Elder was required to file a tax return at all,” she wrote, and ordered the Secretary of State to qualify Larry Elder as a candidate and put his name on the ballot.Once one of the most powerful men in the history of entertainment, Harvey Weinstein’s penal ordeal hit a new low on Tuesday as the convicted rapist underwent extradition from New York State to California, where he faces charges of having sexually assaulted five women between 2004 and 2013. Oddly, even in this age of cancel culture, there appears to be no backlash in the offing against the celebration, enjoyment, and iconic status of the films that Weinstein produced before his ignominious fall.In fact, Pulp Fiction remains such a popular and iconic film that there is even buzz about the possibility of Quentin Tarantino working on a prequel. A piece by Joe Gillis on the Screenrant.com website explores how Tarantino might go about telling the story of the two “Vega brothers,” namely John Travolta’s Vince Vega from Pulp Fiction and Michael Madsen’s Vic Vega from Reservoir Dogs.For many sci-fi and horror fans, one piece of big news this month has been the announcement that Noah Hawley, known for his work on the Fargo TV series, has signed on to be the showrunner behind the adaptation of another iconic, legendary film for the medium of TV. Hawley has reportedly written scripts for early episodes of an Alien series that will air on FX some time in 2022. According to reports in Esquire, the Guardian, and other sources, Hawley plans to emphasize a specific theme of the 1979 film and make it the thrust of the new series, namely the tension between blue-collar protagonists and the corporate masters whose interest in harnessing the Xenomorph species for aggressive military and cynical profit-based ends led to calamity in the Alien movies and thwarted characters’ efforts to destroy the dangerous aliens when they had a chance.