Notes and Essays -- John Brown

By Ben Rhodes, "Henry Kissinger, The Hypocrite,"  The New York Times , Nov 30, 2023; previous Kissinger-related excerpt from NYT posting on this blog  at   Mr. Rhodes is a former deputy national security adviser.   Credit... Kissinger image from article: Michael Avedon/August Excerpt:  "Henry Kissinger, who died on Wednesday, exemplified the gap between the story that America, the superpower, tells and the way that we can act in the world. At turns opportunistic and reactive, his was a foreign policy enamored with the exercise of power and drained of concern for the human beings left in its wake. Precisely because his America was not the airbrushed version of a city on a hill, he never felt irrelevant: Ideas go in and out of style, but power does not. ..." Rhodes image (and text about him) from Wikipedia

"While Mr. Kissinger worked hard to shape the history of his own decisions, he found himself in the odd position of living so long that his own memorandums were declassified while he was still on the world stage."  image from article, with caption: Heinz Kissinger, age 8, in his native Fürth, Germany, in 1931. Withdrawn and bookish, he was nevertheless passionate about soccer — so much so that he risked confrontations with Nazi toughs to see games. From David E. Sanger,  "Henry Kissinger Is Dead at 100; Shaped Nation’s Cold War History [:] The most powerful secretary of state of the postwar era, he was both celebrated and reviled. His complicated legacy still resonates in relations with China, Russia and the Middle East," The New York Times , Nov. 29, 2023 Updated 9:21 p.m. ET; see also

By Marc A. Thiessen, Columnist,  The Washington Post , November 29, 2023 at 12:04 p.m. EST stacks of nearly finished 155mm shells on the factory floor in Scranton, Pa., on Feb. 1. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) Excerpt:     Here is the best-kept secret about U.S. military aid to Ukraine: Most of the money is being spent here in the United States. That’s right: Funds that lawmakers approve to arm Ukraine are not going directly to Ukraine but being used stateside to build new weapons or to replace weapons sent to Kyiv from U.S. stockpiles. Of the $68 billion in military and related assistance Congress has approved since Russia invaded Ukraine, almost 90 percent is going to Americans, one analysis found. ...  In all, our analysis found that there are at least 13 production lines in 10 states and 11 U.S. cities producing new American-made weapons for NATO allies to replace the equipment they have sent to Ukraine. As Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International St

The New York Times , "... Best books of 2023," among them the below  [scroll down NYT link] Ellen and William Craft, fugitive slaves and abolitionists See also  Wikipedia , the free ency clopedia: Ellen Craft  (1826–1891) and  William Craft  (September 25, 1824 – January 29, 1900) were American abolitionists who were born into slavery in  Macon, Georgia . They escaped to the  Northern United States  in December 1848 by traveling by train and steamboat, arriving in  Philadelphia  on Christmas Day. Ellen crossed the boundaries of race, class and gender by  passing  as a white  planter  with William posing as her personal servant. Their escape was widely publicized, making them among the most famous  fugitive slaves in the United States . Abolitionists featured them in public lectures to gain support in the struggle to end the institution. As prominent fugitives, they were threatened by  slave catchers  in  Boston  after the passage of the  Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 , so the Cr

Prized for their nutritional value, onions are beloved around the world. Tears are tolerated.  By Barry Estabrook, The Wall Street Journal , Nov. 24, 2023 10:20 am ET     PHOTO from article:  ALAMY STOCK PHOTO Until I read Mark Kurlansky’s “The Core of an Onion,” I gave little thought to the contents of the red net bag in the corner of my cupboard. Although I’m pretty sure that I eat more than the national average of more than 20 pounds a year, I had never rubbed one of the odoriferous alliums all over my body to improve my workouts, eaten one to enhance my performance in bed, tossed one in my children’s bath water to make them grow taller or mixed the juice of one in my coffee to beat a cold. These are just some of the fascinating uses for onions in Mr. Kurlansky’s lively cavalcade of onion facts and lore from around the globe and across the ages. The author’s longtime specialty is to explore the world through single items in our diet. In his book “Cod” (1997), he tells the story of h