Why Is France Burning?
Listen to the podcast here. The opposite of the US, France’s cities are wealthy while there’s poverty in the suburbs. And Macron is known as the president of the rich. What’s we’re seeing is a collapse of the “centrist” European…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump & the Rrrrussians
Given the vitriol gushing out of corporate media over the purchase of about two weeks’ worth of Russian diesel fuel, we just might be watching the beginning of the endgame in Ukraine. Given the gush of vitriol and condemnation since…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Honoring Frances Stonor Saunders
In her revelatory work The Cultural Cold War, the late British author was the first to shine so unblinking a light on the sprawl of the C.I.A.’s cultural interventions. Frances Stonor Saunders was fond of epigraphs (as am I). At…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Swiss Neutrality & its Enemies
We must contemplate a world without the Swiss as facilitators of peace processes if the neutrality initiative fails on Sept. 27. As reported here and there in Western media, although not very often or well or honestly, the Swiss will…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: In Praise of French Students
If the streets of France have something important to tell us now, it is that the centrist, or liberal-authoritarian, model is crumbling as surely as the lycées of Lyons and Nimes. The French have had a certain gift for street…
“Trump’s war with the ‘liberal’ press.”
Are there any innnocents in this fight? To our readers. We apologize for our silence lately. No sooner did we return from our summer lectures in Switzerland (published here and here) than we succumbed to bouts of Covid. We’re now…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Games Trump & Liberal Media Play
We are looking at a dysfunction that transcends the contest for power between liberal authoritarians — politely called “centrists” these days — and their rightist counterparts. If the Trump regime is any good at anything, it is escalation. Wars, sanctions,…
“‘Terrorism,’ this insidious word.”
John Whitbeck on power and the manipulation of language. Summer Readings. 25 September—Of all the epithets power deploys to condemn, demonize, or ostracize those who question or oppose its late-imperial hegemony, a couple have been prominently in vogue for some…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The War Outside Our Doors
In fighting Zionist genocide in Gaza, Macklemore, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor have something to tell us all. There are things to do and victories to achieve so long as there is a willingness to accept sacrifice. Let’s do some…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Same Old but Worse in Israel
If there is one nation in the world that needs more than any other to find a new direction it is “the Jewish state.” But if there is one more committed to its current path it is the Jewish state….