Notes and Essays -- John Brown

Death tolls:  A Washington-based group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, has reported that at least 1,443 civilians had been killed in Iran.   More than 1,000 people in Lebanon have been killed, the authorities there said on Thursday. At least 15 people were killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials said. The American death toll stood at 13 service members. From The New York Times , March 24

One story from Ukraine Inbox The Kyiv Independent   Unsubscribe 5:28 PM (1 hour ago) to  me Our mission is to keep the truth about Russia’s war against Ukraine visible — and that’s only possible because people like you choose not to look away. Become a member today Read in Browser Reporter Tania Myronyshena Monday March 23 7 minutes read Ukraine’s deep strikes make Russians feel the war Ukraine has increasingly pursued a strategy of "bringing the war back to Russia" — aiming to erode the perception that the full-scale invasion is distant and cost-free for Russian society. This approach was explicitly articulated by President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2025, as Ukraine significantly expanded its deep-strike campaign inside Russia. "The war was brought from Russia, and it is to Russia that the war must be pushed back. They must be the ones forced into peace. They are the ones who must be pressured to ensure security," Zelensky said. An internal analysis by the Ukrainian NG...

Trump said, “we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out.” from

[A Point of view from Quora] Dmitrii Eliseev  ·  Follow Lived in  Russia  (1979–2015)  Jan 16 Why doesn’t Russia simply invade Ukraine on a massive scale as in World War II and crush Ukraine in one Titanic campaign? Why doesn’t Russia simply invade Ukraine on a massive scale as in World War II? Well, there is a simple answer - the vast majority of Russians have absolutely no wish or motivation to die on the Ukrainian front. The thing is, it is  not  WWII. This conflict is absolutely irrational. The Russian and Ukrainian people were not enemies. People from Russia spent vacations in Ukraine, Ukrainian shows were on Russian TV, artists from Kyiv were making concerts in Moscow, etc. Here is something unthinkable today - Zelensky performing at a New Year's concert in Moscow in 2013: Russian propaganda later tried to “sell” the idea about the “nazis” in Ukraine, but in reality, probably nobody cares. It is not an existential threat that will cause masses o...

"Trump postpones strikes on Iranian power plants for five days"; note "witch" in the below text 20 minutes ago 07:10 EDT Source: 

Opinion  A university in Kyiv is under siege — and running more than 12 hours a day. March 16, 2026 7 min By Nicholas A. Christakis, The Washington Post   Nicholas A. Christakis lectures in a bomb shelter at the Kyiv School of Economics. (Courtesy of KSE) Nicholas A. Christakis is a physician and sociologist who directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University. He hosts “For the Love of Science” on YouTube. I’d never taught in a war zone before. But when the rector of the Kyiv School of Economics called last autumn, I found it impossible to say no. Three days in a nice hotel with a fortified bomb shelter while the rest of the country endured daily attacks? The visit seemed like a small show of solidarity with scientific colleagues and the Ukrainian people. It felt, too, like an opportunity to witness theory in practice. Having spent my career studying the biological and social roots of collective human behavior, I understood that wider circles of people exchanging ideas can mak...