John Brown's Notes and Essays

image from When I asked myself, while practicing " public diplomacy " as a U.S. Foreign Service officer for over twenty years, whether I was pushing propaganda, my feeble conscience would answer: "No, not propaganda, but improperganda."  [Just found out the term "improperganda" can be found on the web; am not associated with any of the sites/views referring to that word; I naively thought I was being linguistically "original" when it first resounded in my feeble brain.]

  image    from "The propaganda makes you feel alone.    That's why we came here. To show that we are not alone." --A Moscow protester; quoted in Jason Breslow, "Defying Putin, Russians Return to the Streets to Demand Alexei Navalny's Release," NPR , January 31, 2021  10:20 AM ET 

Michigan is home to the country’s biggest pizza chains, except for the one that launched the square pie with a diagram for novices Image from article: The original kitchen staff at Buddy’s with a Detroit-style pizza. PHOTO: BUDDY'S By Mike Colias in Detroit and Annie Gasparro in Chicago, The Wall Street Journal , Jan. 28, 2021 12:04 pm ET [ Original article contains additional illustrations ]; [ pls. note: just received from a distinguished Philly-based scholar/professor: " In the City of Brotherly Love we call it Sicilian style pizza"]   https://www.yelp.com/biz/ santuccis-original-square- pizza-philadelphia-2  . This week, Pizza Hut launched its new Detroit-style pizza.] Pizza Hut’s Detroit-style pizza comes in a box describing what's inside.  PHOTO:  SUSAN SELASKY/DETROIT FREE PRESS There’s just one problem: A lot of people have no clue what that is . “Detroit style? I’ve never heard of it,” said Mike Zurek, 70, who has lived in Chicago nearly all his life....

  A woman holds a toilet brush as she takes part in an unauthorized rally in support of Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny.   Vitaly Nevar —TASS via Getty Images BY  MADELINE ROACHE , Time JANUARY 29, 2021 2:37 PM EST T wo days after  Alexey Navalny , head of Russia’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) was arrested on his return to Moscow from Berlin, he released a video expose that shocked Russians and people around the world. In the  video , “Putin’s palace. History of the world’s largest bribe,” Navalny alleged that an opulent property near Gelendzhik, a town in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar, was constructed for Russian President Vladimir Putin with illicit funds of $1.35 billion, provided by members of his inner circle, and that Putin is the real owner of the palace. The palace’s features apparently include a port, a vineyard, a church, a casino, an underground hockey rink, and toilet brushes costing $850 a piece. “It is a separate state wit...

Image from article, with caption:  A protester dons a mask depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin during a demonstration. In his book, Craig Unger makes a detailed case that Trump is a Kremlin asset outside Donald Trump’s Washington hotel in October.  By John Sipher, The Washington Post ,  Jan. 29, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. EST [ original article contains links. ] John Sipher worked for the CIA’s clandestine service for 28 years. He is now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a co-founder of Spycraft Entertainment  [jb: on so-called "Spycraft Entertainment [?]," see ] One of the standard warnings attached to U.S. intelligence reports is that the source of a report intends “to influence as well as inform.” The caveat does not mean that the source’s reporting is wrong or should be discounted, but that the source also has an agenda. Craig Unger’s new book, “American Kompromat,” should be read with a similar understanding, for it opens with the presumption...

12 Unsuspected Benefits of Radishes for Which they Should [jb - be] Eaten More Regularly,  fruttattiva.com ; note: no sources cited in the article image from article The scientific name of the radish is Raphanus Sativus [jb - see also, for a far more serious treatment of radishes ,  Wikipedia , which notes: " Radishes can be useful as  companion plants  for many other crops, probably because their pungent odour deters such insect pests as  aphids ,  cucumber beetles ,  tomato hornworms ,  squash bugs , and  ants . ]. This little and strange tuber belongs to the Brassicaceae family. Its shape is so peculiar that it’s usually used as decoration. Its splash of color in a good salad has something magic for sure from a chromatic point of view.  However, there’s something more we can’t probably even imagine. Radishes hide great benefits for our health, they’re rich of relevant nutrients such as potassium in the first place: 1 kilo ...

Elinor Aspegren, USA TODAY , Published 7:15 p.m. ET, Jan 27, 2021; updated  1 1:17 am. ET Jan 28, 2021 [ original article contains additional links and illustrations. ] Abraham Lincoln. Dianne Feinstein. George Washington. Paul Revere. These names are among ones that must be removed from public schools because of their ties to slavery, oppression, or racism, San Francisco school board officials decided by a 6-1 vote on Tuesday night. More than a third of the district’s 125 schools made the list of objectionable names, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Schools will have until April to offer new names, which will then be voted on by board members. The new namesakes must adhere to a set of guidelines, including that individuals proposed must not have been slave owners or abetted in slavery or genocide, violated human rights violations, or be "known racists and/or white supremacists." Feinstein, a U.S. senator from California since 1992, was added to the list because she re...

Sentenced and reprieved, exiled and returned, Fyodor Dostoevsky made human suffering the center of his work . Image (not from article): "Monument to the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky near the Russia State Library in Moscow, sculptor A. Rukavishnikova, 1997"  from Book Review by Sara Wheeler , The Wall Street Journal , Jan. 29, 2021 11:19 am ET [ o riginal article contains illustrations. ]  A British publishing executive who has written two novels, including the prizewinning “Glass,” Mr. Christofi has produced what he calls “a reconstructed memoir” eliding extracts from Dostoevsky’s public and private writings with the events of his life. After all, as Mr. Christofi says, “the ghost of his autobiography is already present in his writings.” At the outset of “Dostoevsky in Love,” he sets out his methodology (“some ground rules”). Quotation marks signal lines taken directly from Dostoevsky or a contemporary. “Intimate” material drawn from letters, notebooks, journalism or fic...

Is the trouble with marriage  -- just  intimacy ? ...

image from While taking a daily stroll in Cleveland Park (a neighborhood in Washington DC), I make it a point to pick up /litter trash (on sidewalks, on street curbs) with my genius-invented grabber . What I have noticed -- as a total ecological non-expert -- is how the litter/trash accumulating in a section of the former (?) imperial capital consists of: Disposed of anti-coronavirus masks; latex gloves What an irony! We 'Merikans fight the virus plague and yet dump our plague-protection items that pollute -- wherever, whenever in our neighborhoods ... Just a thought (will Pascal forgive me for using the post- posthumous   word  given to his thoughts, in the singular?) ... Have a nice day!  BTW, American patriots, don't forget -- pardon the puritan preaching [ppp] -- to pick up the s--t where you live (even outside of your home,  on the street where you live ) ...

Overheard in the (former?) Imperial Capital, Washington DC image from

In Lithuania, he was celebrated as a hero. But we can’t move on until we admit what he really did .  By Silvia Foti [ see ] , The New York Times , Jan. 27, 2021  Ms. Foti is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming “The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Learned My Grandfather Was a War Criminal.” The author’s grandfather, Jonas Noreika. Credit...Family photograph   When I was growing up in Chicago during the Cold War, my parents taught me to revere my Lithuanian heritage. We sang Lithuanian songs and recited Lithuanian poems; after Lithuanian school on Saturdays, I would eat Lithuanian-style potato pancakes. My grandfather, Jonas Noreika, was a particularly important part of my family story: He was the mastermind of a 1945-1946 revolt against the Soviet Union, and was executed. A picture of him in his military uniform hung in our living room. Today, he is a hero not just in my family. He has streets, plaques and a school named after him. He was awarded the Cross of the V...