John Brown's Notes and Essays

Ella and Louis image from Ella and Louis... immortalized on you tube   *** JB personal note:  I remember, as a Foreign Service brat, my dear diplomat/scholar pater familias , John L Brown (ok, father/dad), playing Ella's songs in our living room on a 20th-century record player after a family meal with guests from the country where he/we the family was posted.  Not to speak of other " public diplomacy " events he, papa, pulled together in his USG career, charming European audiences. (He served in France, Belgium, Italy). I don't fully trust my memory (nor should you :) re all of Francophile dad's transnational cultural home events.  Still, I do remember, perhaps familingly with my failing memory, that his guests chez lui were enchanted by (among other things, including, perhaps, Ella's elocution, to thankful non-native English speakers) the American music he played on the record player . ***  P.S. Pls. don't fully trust my aged memory as a "fact...

Sanders image  from  (not from article)  By Ben Terris, The Washington Post , May 8, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT [original article contains links and photographs] It’s a Wednesday evening in April, and the ambiance at Old Ebbitt Grill, the historic tourist trap steps from the White House, feels familiar, if not exactly normal. The restaurant is operating at 25 percent capacity, per D.C’s covid-19 guidelines. A family with two young boys work their way through a mountain of french fries, waiters in black masks bring martinis to tables separated by transparent dividers, and a new political power couple tucks quietly into a back booth. Symone Sanders, 31, senior adviser to Vice President Harris, has just come from work, wearing a camel-hair-colored shawl, her long, rainbow fingernails tapping on her phone. “Sorry, I’ve just been knee-deep in the Northern Triangle,” she says, referring to the Central American nations whose citizens have fled in large numbers to America’s southern ...

HEARD ON THE STREET [:] Amazon and Walmart Have an Rx for Healthcare. The Cure Won’t Be Easy. Tech, banking and retail giants face numerous obstacles in their efforts to fix—and profit from—an industry that attracts $4 trillion  annually   image from article, with caption, ROB DOBI By Charley Grant , The Wall Street Journal ,  May 28, 2021 5:30 am [article contains additional links and charts] Corporate America has four trillion reasons to get into, and perhaps upend, the business of healthcare , but even a tech genius will find the system puzzling.  Google parent Alphabet and hospital chain HCA Healthcare struck a deal this week to develop algorithms using patient records in order to guide medical decision making and improve operating efficiency. Megabank JPMorgan Chase is building a new unit that will work on health initiatives for its employees and invest $250 million in startups and technologies meant to make their healthcare more efficient and effective. Meanwh...

image (not from article) from "At one point during Gulf & Western’s ownership of Paramount Pictures, the company considered selling the studio’s back lot on Melrose Avenue  to a developer who planned to turn it into a cemetery . " Quotation from: Inti Pacheco and Erich Schwartzel, "Corporate America and Hollywood: A Love Story. To understand an era’s business trends, look at who’s buying a studio. From Gulf & Western to Amazon, the companies drawn in by the movies," The Wall Street Journal , May 29, 2021 12:00 am ET

By RFE/RL's Russian Service, RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty May 28, 2021 11:45 GMT   Image from article: Investigative journalist Ivan Golunov (file photo)   A Russian court has sentenced five former police officers to several years in prison for the 2019 arrest of investigative journalist Ivan Golunov on trumped-up drug charges. The Moscow City Court on May 28 handed down prison terms ranging between five years and 12 years after finding the men guilty of the charges following a closed-door trial. They were also ordered to pay Golunov 1 million rubles ($13,600) each in compensation.  The 38-year-old Golunov, who works for the Latvia-based information outlet Meduza , was arrested in June 2019 in Moscow for allegedly attempting to sell illegal drugs. He was released several days later after the charges were dropped following a public outcry. The journalist suffered bruises, cuts, a concussion, and a broken rib during the ordeal.  The police officers who detain...

  @Pro-CCP: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK 05/28/2021 RUTH INGRAM , Bitter Winter A+   |   A- A University of Oxford report shows 98,000 tweets were connected with a Chinese program spreading the propaganda statements of Beijing’s ambassador in London. by Ruth Ingram @Londoneye826, @JenniferatUK, @Hushpup16240621, and @JoeParker135, appear to be a random collection of ardent British football fans, or political pundits based in London, sharing a common love for China, who tweet with 60 or so others for all they are worth about the glories of the Middle Kingdom. But all is not as it seems  according to researchers  at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), a multidisciplinary research and teaching department of the University of Oxford, who set out to audit all Twitter engagement with PRC London-based diplomats from June 2020 to January 2021 suspecting something shady was afoot. They came to some surprising conclusions. The tweeters, it was discov...

image from Excerpt from: Patrick Martin, "Senate clears passage of economic warfare legislation directed at China," World Socialist Website  ("15 hours ago"); JB: date not provided. See also "The bill ... establishes a fund to counter Chinese influence globally and encourages 'public diplomacy'—i.e., the promotion of illusions in the beneficent role of the United States —in the Indo-Pacific region. The bill also codifies in law the temporary prohibition of US-China cooperation in space, which had previously been extended from year to year." *** See also: John Brown, "Public Diplomacy and Propaganda: Their Differences," American Diplomacy (2008)

From fake news by official Israeli spokespeople to misleading Instagram infographics by purported pro-Palestinians accounts, both sides weaponized facts in this round of Gaza fighting   image (reposed by Diet Prada from instagram) from article Omer Benjakob , Haaretz , May. 27, 2021  [original article contains additional links to texts, videos, and images] The Israel Defense Forces spokesperson lied to international media two weeks ago. In what it later described as a mistake, the IDF announced – in English only – that it had begun a ground offensive in Gaza. The land invasion was imaginary, but it was part of a ploy to get Hamas fighters to go underground ahead of a very real aerial attack that night on Gaza’s system of subterranean tunnels. Though the IDF apologized, the incident was only one example of how the Israeli army weaponizes facts – especially in English – as part of its strategy. Indeed, it seems that as Israel and Hamas keep fighting the same conflict again and...

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF MAY 27, 2021 20:32 Barbivai image from Wikipedia Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chair Orna Barbivai advocated on Thursday for a reform in Israel's narrative diplomacy policies in light of the recent tensions brought on by the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas. Barbivai addressed her concerns in a meeting dealing with public diplomacy, in an effort to improve Israel's image diplomacy efforts. "There is a massive gap between the story we are telling ourselves, and the story the world is telling about us," Barbivai said. "These stories are being told simultaneously, and we can't let it continue.   "There is no doubt in my mind that [Israel's] public diplomacy efforts needs to be reformed," she concluded.

A team of international researchers has assembled an atlas of microorganisms present in 60 cities around the world .   [j b minor comment: Relax and enjoy your comfortable subway ride, esp. during crowded rush hours in the summer! : ) ] Image from article: New York City subway riders in 2017. From 2015 to 2017, researchers collected samples in 60 cities on six continents and found 4,246 known species of microorganisms. Credit...Benjamin Norman for The New York Times  By Emily Anthes , The New York Times , Published May 26, 2021 Updated May 27, 2021, 3:12 a.m. ET [original article contains links and additional illustrations] For centuries, naturalists have mapped the world’s flora and fauna. They have assembled atlases of migratory birds and cold-water fishes, sketched out the geography of carnivorous animals and alpine plants. Now, an enormous international team of researchers has added a new volume to the collection: an atlas of microorganisms that can be found in the wo...