Patrick Lawrence: Becoming Who We Are
The following is an edited, amended, and condensed version of a speech I delivered in Zurich’s environs earlier this month. The occasion was sponsored by Zeit–Fragen, a twice-monthly journal that also comes out in French and English as Horizons et débats and Current Concerns….
Patrick Lawrence: ‘Automated Murder’: Israel’s ‘AI’ in Gaza
“Technological change, while it helps humanity meet the challenges nature imposes upon us, leads to a paradigm shift: It leaves us less capable, not more, of using our intellectual capacities. It diminishes our minds in the long run. We strive…
Patrick Lawrence: Imperium: Decline on the Way to Fall
I just read a most remarkable piece in The Seattle Times—remarkable for its bluntly nihilistic candor. The headline atop Ron Judd’s August 2021 essay for The Times’s Pacific NW Magazine gives a good idea of the writer’s point: “The decline of American…
Patrick Lawrence: Late-Imperial Duplicities
As I was saying to Diocletian over Prosecco just last week, it is hard to run an empire these days. You have to lie to people more or less incessantly to keep the troops minding the perimeter in supplies. No…
Patrick Lawrence: Old Man Shouting, The American Empire is Doing Great! But It Isn’t
Democratic elites and the reporters who clerk for them were effusively approving of Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech last Thursday evening—not so much for what he said, which came nothing new, as for the demeanor of our enfeebled president. Never…
Patrick Lawrence: The CIA in Ukraine — The NY Times Gets a Guided Tour
The New York Times recently ran a story called “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin.” Patrick Lawrence writes that these “secrets” only contained what the CIA “wanted and did not want disclosed,” and were “effectively…
Patrick Lawrence: Corporate Media Is an Arm of Power; We Must Build an Alternative
In his new book, ¨Journalists and Their Shadows,¨ Patrick Lawrence describes his experience over decades as an editor and foreign correspondent of watching the media rise and fall in its ability to serve as a force to hold power accountable….
Patrick Lawrence: Guilt and Responsibility
The Case of Germany and Israel Many years ago, another time and place, I had a German friend who hailed from Hamburg. Christophe was a cultivated sort—well-read, impressive art on the walls of his apartment. I remember how inordinately fond…
Patrick Lawrence: The Crisis at The New York Times
From Israeli Propaganda to Page One. It has been evident to many of us since the genocide in Gaza began Oct. 7 that Israel risked asking too much of those inclined to take its side. The Zionist state would ask…
Patrick Lawrence: The Palestinians Won in The Hague: So Did the Rest of Us
The non–West has spoken, it has raised its voice. Half a dozen years ago I sat in the lobby lounge at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan talking at length with Richard Falk, the scholar, lawyer, U.N. rapporteur, and advocate of Palestinian…
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