John Brown's Notes and Essays

From:  Politico Playbook :  French President Emmanuel Macron whispers to U.S. President Joe Biden following their dinner at the G-7 Summit in Elmau, Germany on Sunday. | A P

image (not from article) from Newswires, June 27, 2022, 13:34 GMT, under the title: Former Obama-Biden Advisor Elizabeth M. Allen Sworn-In as Asst Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs, on September 13, 2021. [State Department Photo by Freddie Everett/ Public Domain]  Senior Official for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Liz Allen will travel to Los Angeles, California and Honolulu, Hawaii June 27 – 30. In Los Angeles, she will visit the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the School of Cinematic Arts, which partners with the Department of State on the Middle East Media Initiative and the American Film Showcase, and members of the public diplomacy community. In Honolulu, Senior Official Allen will deliver a keynote address on international media freedom, emerging technology, and countering disinformation issues, as well as the importance of people-to-people engagement in fostering trust and ...

JUNE 27, 2022   — Four faculty members from UTSA have received Fulbright U.S. Scholar awards for the upcoming 2022-2023 academic year, a record for the institution. Prestigious and competitive, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar program, which is overseen by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, allows American faculty, as well as artists and professionals, the opportunity to teach, conduct research, and lead related professional projects in over 130 countries. They come away with greater mutual and cultural understanding, an expanded network, and new and enhanced skills. Fulbright scholars also play a critical role in U.S. public diplomacy, establishing long-term relationships between people and nations. Alumni include 61 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 76 MacArthur Fellows, and thousands of leaders and world-renowned experts in academia and many other fields across the private, public, and non-profit sectors. uncaptioned image fr...

BY TARA D. SONENSHINE, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - the hill , 06/26/22 12:00 PM ET  THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL  image (not from article) from People care about their image, how others perceive them. So do nations. Into that complex public opinion vortex comes a new report from Pew Research Center, which has been measuring international attitudes for decades.  The findings of this  new Pew survey  on international perceptions of the United States,  Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) include critical data for all of us, especially Americans. Pew’s data were collected from February of this year through the third week of May — a critical window when things were changing across the globe. On Feb. 24, Russia began a  full-scale military assault  on Ukraine leading to a massive refugee and humanitarian crisis and an urgent need for military equipment and troops from the West.  Presi...

Ivan Bakanov was tapped to revamp the controversial Security Service of Ukraine. But after a string of failures and the loss of Kherson, he’s fallen out of favor with the Ukrainian president. image from article: Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a speech. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks from Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 3, 2022. | Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP By CHRISTOPHER MILLER [ jb: on his bio, see ], Politico , 06/23/2022 02:46 PM EDT, see also ( 1 ) via Prof PS  KYIV — You think you know someone, and then Russia invades your country and your childhood friend turned top intelligence official flubs it and some of his senior spies flee their posts, apparently helping the Kremlin’s forces avoid landmines and direct its attack aircraft to blast your cities.  President Volodymyr Zelenskyy isn’t getting a lot of sleep these days, and the man he appointed to lead Ukraine’s domestic intelligence and security agency can’t be helping matters. Ivan Bakanov — h...

To wage a literary revolution based in Mussolini’s Italy, Pound looked to Yeats, Hemingway and others as recruits.   image from article:  Portrait of Ezra Pound (1938) by Wyndham Lewis. PHOTO: ALAMY   By Dominic Green , The Wall Street Journal , June 24, 2022 11:49 am ET / Percy Shelley called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” No poet sought acknowledgment more enthusiastically than Ezra Pound. No poet legislated so ambitiously or disastrously, either. Pound was the impresario of Modernism. He stripped the Victorian padding from the verse of T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats, launched magazines and the Imagist movement, and published the first chapters of Joyce’s “Ulysses.” He was also a fascist and fanatical anti-Semite who propagandized on the radio for Mussolini’s regime. After the war, Pound’s friends and fans, Eliot among them, convinced the American authorities that he was not bad, just mad. He was lucky not to be executed as a traitor. Lauren Arrington’...

The Russian president and his inner circle speak openly about retaking the vast lands that Moscow once controlled. As the war continues in Ukraine, Russia’s neighbors are taking the threats seriously.  image from article: From left: Peter the Great, Vladimir Putin and Joseph Stalin. JOAN WONG FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY IMAGES (3); ASSOCIATED PRESS By Yaroslav Trofimov , The Wall Street Journal , June 24, 2022 11:53 am ET [original article contains additional illustrations and videos] At a ceremony honoring young geographers in 2016, President Vladimir Putin asked one boy about the capital of Burkina Faso and then quizzed another about where Russia’s borders end. “At the Bering Strait with the United States,” the 9-year-old boy ventured hesitantly. Mr. Putin, who chairs the board of the Russian Geographic Society, contradicted the boy to triumphant applause. “The borders of Russia,” he pronounced, “never end.” The scene, years before Mr. Putin’s invasion ...