ARTICLES

PATRICK LAWRENCE: ‘As the Clever Hopes Expire’: A Look Back at the Ending Decade
A monumentally destructive U.S. decade — symptomatic of imperial decline — exposed a shamefully pliant press. But we have at least one reason to resist incurable pessimism. I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-Second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf…

Twilight’s last gleaming: Can Americans learn to accept the notion of post-exceptionalism?
Among the fundamental conceits of the exceptionalist creed is that America is above the laws that govern all other nations. A leap of faith is required to end this fallacy, argues Patrick Lawrence At four-thirty in the afternoon on Saturday, 4 April 2009,…

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump’s Creaky Door to Peace in the Koreas
The question is, which side betrayed the once-promising prospect of denuclearization and an end of seven decades of flashpoint tension in Northeast Asia. In June 2018, when Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un summitted in Singapore, the American and North Korean…

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Now the Interim of US Self-Deception Over Bolivia
To read the mainstream press on what just happened to Evo Morales is to enter a hall of mirrors. Years from now, maybe a generation from now, it will be permissible to describe Evo Morales’s resignation-at-gunpoint two weeks ago as…

PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Impeachment Pantomime
The political theatrics that begin Wednesday raise several questions. For starters, will Joe Biden be investigated for mounting evidence of corruption? And why is the corporate media turning the CIA “whistleblower” into a phantom in plain sight? Now that “Russiagate” has…

PATRICK LAWRENCE: A Sudden-Seeming Power Shift in the Middle East
Despite the high-speed impression created by events in the past few weeks, the shifting trends of Russian and U.S. influence on the region have been underway for years. Rarely do world events move at the velocity they now assume in the…

PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Predictable Mess on Syria’s Border with Turkey
Trump just missed an opportunity to pull back troops without inducing another bloodbath. In less than a week, a new front has opened in Syria’s 8-year, all-but-over war, featuring hot- and cold-running proxies from its earliest days. Syrian sovereignty is…

PATRICK LAWRENCE: At UN, European Allies & Trump Clip Pompeo’s Hawk Wings
After the recent strikes on Saudi oil facilities, E-3 leaders offered a sop to the secretary of state but resisted key elements of his “maximum hostility” campaign towards Iran while Trump also distanced himself. This week’s General Assembly at the United Nations…

The Revelations of WikiLeaks: No. 5 — Busting the Myth WikiLeaks Never Published Damaging Material on Russia
A month before Hillary Clinton spread the widely-believed myth that WikiLeaks had never revealed anything on Russia, the publication had already released more than a million files on the country. via Consortium News: This is the fifth article in a series that…

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Now That Washington’s Most Dangerous Man is Sacked
This week provides chances to monitor resets in Trump’s foreign policy after John Bolton’s destructive tenure. The most dangerous man in Washington has been sacked. John Bolton’s suitably humiliating departure from the Trump White House last week leaves the president free…
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