ARTICLES
Patrick Lawrence: What Is Said and What Is Done
U.S. Policy as Spectacle Those Israelis: They are too honest sometimes, aren’t they? It is damnably inconvenient when they explain in perfectly plain terms that the Israel Defense Forces’ intent in Gaza is to ethnic-cleanse the territory of Palestinians, or…
“‘Terrorism,’ this insidious word.”
It has many dangers. John V. Whitbeck Reacting to the U.S. response after the events of 11 September 2001, John Whitbeck, an international attorney of long standing, wrote a piece on the use and abuse of the word “terrorism” for Global…
“Birdsong and laughter.”
Remembering what matters most. Over the holidays, a friend paused toward the end of an evening’s talk and jollifications to ask, “Should we be celebrating?” We stood together in front of the decorated Christmas tree and in the course of…
“A New Year’s note to readers.”
Brief thoughts on the year gone by and the year ahead. 30 DECEMBER—There must be many years at the end of which it is tempting to rank them among the truly awful. Maybe this thought is a comment on our…
Patrick Lawrence: To Retrieve History
It Is Our 2024 Project. I am still reading, at this late date, that Russian soldiers kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children early in Washington’s proxy war in that perversely cursed country and brought them to Russia to teach them to…
Patrick Lawrence: What? Ukraine Is Not Winning the War?
The Narrative Turns. Now What? “Putin’s Russia is closing in on a devastating victory. Europe’s foundations are trembling.” This was the headline atop a Dec.9 commentary in The Telegraph, the farthest right of the major London dailies. The subhead elaborated the theme in…
IMPEACHMENT: Biden Under Formal Investigation
Patrick Lawrence writes that Joe Biden, a.k.a. “the Big Guy,” will be formally investigated on accumulating evidence he participated and benefited from his son Hunter’s years of manifestly criminal conniving. It is now two and a half months since the…
Patrick Lawrence: That New Hunter Biden Indictment
It’s a Limited Hangout. Before wading through the latest indictment of Hunter Biden, this one for nine counts of assorted tax violations, we must consider briefly the record of David Weiss, the special counsel who signed the 56–page document made…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Gaza & Confronting Power
The American state, broadly defined, is well on its way toward a form of apple-pie absolutism, forcing distorted meanings not merely on three university administrators but on all of us. The events of the past seven days are sobering no…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Outsider Among Us
John Pilger, 1939–2023 In the spring of 1983, the late and greatly missed John Pilger began broadcasting a series of interviews called The Outsiders on British television. His subjects ranged widely. Costa–Gavras, Jessica Mitford, Seán MacBride, the Irish political figure and 1974 Nobelist, and Helen Suzman,…