John Brown's Notes and Essays

Overheard (in my feeble mind) in a Washington DC neighborhood: "Trump's MO: 'It's not what you say, it's how you control it on the mass media. Then you get attention.  Repetition is all that counts." image from Benito T. image from

  ютьюб from:   Вечерняя Медуза (Feb 26, 2021) jb: it's more than a translation; it's a work of calligraphic art! Image from  --  (jb: forget about the missing  Anglo-Saxon   definite article " the ")  :)

Politics [:] Biden tells the world ‘America is back.’ The world isn’t so sure.   image (not from article) from By Anne Gearan and Ashley Parker, The Washington Post , Feb. 27, 2021 at 5:08 p.m. EST    [Original article contains links; a video, " Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Feb. 25 said he was confident the building targeted was used by the militia responsible for attacks against U.S. personnel:  and a photograph, " President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talk during a virtual meeting at the White House."] For President Biden and his circle, a low point in America’s global standing under President Donald Trump came when he blew up a meeting of U.S. allies in 2018, accusing close partners of “robbing” the United States and hurling insults at his Canadian host. So it was no accident that Biden’s push to reclaim American leadership in recent days has pointedly included a starring role for Canada, as the new administration seeks to woo an array ...

A group of prospective students tours the Georgetown University campus in Washington in 2014. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post) By Jay Mathews, Columnist, The Washington Post , Feb. 27, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EST  This is America, full of exciting business ideas even in difficult times. Travel writer and YouTuber Seth Kugel brainstormed with four other entrepreneurs as the coronavirus pandemic hit hard last April. They thought: Why not start one-on-one college tours conducted by uninhibited undergraduates via Zoom?    “Current in-person college tours are boring and there’s very little serious engagement between high school kids and walking-backwards tour guides,” Kugel said. Online tours are usually done under college control without the irrepressible approach the group envisaged. “Most people don’t have access to current college students who can speak freely and honestly about life on campus,” Kugel said.  “We began realizing the potential social good in evening ...

I struggled to explain how American democracy deteriorated so quickly. There is a long road ahead in restoring our global leadership. By  STEVE KASHKETT  | FEBRUARY 21, 2021, Diplomatic Diary ;  see also. Thousands demonstrated in Cologne, Germany, on June 6, 2020, in support of the Black Lives Matter protests against the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. AP photo. T he warm, enthusiastic welcome that greeted President Biden’s election among Europeans has already begun a long-needed reset in trans-Atlantic relations. As a former U.S. diplomat and expat teaching at two universities in Prague since 2018, I experienced first-hand the precipitous decline of our country’s image in the eyes of both foreign leaders and ordinary people . Still perceived as a representative of the United States, I often found myself struggling to explain how American governance and democracy deteriorated so quickly. Despite the elation that accompanied the end of the Trump...

“State of Terror,” set for release in October, is about a secretary of state confronting terrorism threats and a weakened nation.  By Alexandra Alter , The New York Times , Feb. 23, 2021   Before we started, we talked about her time as secretary of state,” the mystery novelist Louise Penny, right, said of Hillary Clinton. “What was her worst nightmare? ‘State of Terror’ is the answer.”    Credit...Left to right: Mike Cohen for The New York Times; Jean-François Bérubé   In Louise Penny’s upcoming thriller, a novice secretary of state faces the daunting task of rebuilding American leadership after years of diminishing influence abroad. She is immediately put to the test when a wave of terrorist attacks threatens to destabilize the world order. A topical political thriller represents new territory for Penny, who is best known for intricate murder mysteries set in a quiet Canadian town. But she had a political veteran on hand to help her shape the plot: her co-au...

image (not from article) from "[Sherry] Turkle believes that the pandemic is a ' liminal ' ( jb link ) time, in the phrasing of the writer and anthropologist Victor Turner, a time in which we are 'betwixt and between,' a catastrophe with a built-in opportunity to reinvent. 'In these liminal periods are these possibilities for change,' she said.' I think we are living through a time, both in our social lives but also in how we deal with our technology, where we are willing to think of very different ways of behaving.'”   --Sherry Turkle (born June 18, 1948) is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( Wikipedia ); the above citation is from The New York Times (Feb. 26, 2021) Turkle image from Wikipedia

Russia: The Architect of Putin's Purported Palace Comments on Alexei Navalny's Film  (via PS from Der Spiegel ; and with thanks to IL).  See  also, " Italy–Russia relations" - Wikipedia, which notes: " Peter the Great and other Russian leaders looked to Italian cities for cultural models, especially in architecture  and music. Italy for Russians has been the exemplar of the highest stages of culture, whether classical, Renaissance, or Baroque.  For example, the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg was in part modeled after St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.   Classical Russian literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries was strongly influenced by Renaissance Italy."  JB note: Isn't the Black Sea well-off Russians' vision/dreams of the Mediterranean? Image from article: The vast villa on the Black Sea coast as filmed in a drone from video by Alexei Navalny; jb - original article below contains videos Lanfranco Cirillo is sitting in front of his comput...