PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Banality of Propaganda
The annals of the awful art — Hitler’s, Mussolini’s, Japan’s and America’s during World War II — show that it does not have to be sophisticated. The Israeli president’s display of Mein Kampf just proved that again. I watched a video clip Sunday of Isaac Herzog that…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Decency Becomes Indecent
At this point, Washington’s defense of Israel becomes as baldly obscene as the apartheid state’s long record of lawless aggression toward the Palestinian population. There have been many, very many singular moments among America’s purported leaders and assorted officials and…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Tampering With History
History tells us where we are in the human story and what we, alive now, must do to advance this story. To tamper with history is among the gravest of sins against the human cause. The first sign of trouble…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Question About Biden
In the wake of Zelensky’s wildly provocative statements, it is time to question whether the U.S. president has a personal interest in prolonging the war in Ukraine. A friend and colleague wrote in an unusually sage commentary a couple of years ago that Ukraine would prove…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Bad Faith & Blank Checks
All mainstream journalism is “embedded journalism” now, for the battlefield is everywhere, writes Patrick Lawrence in this excerpt from his new book, Journalists and Their Shadows. Some years ago, as the decline of American media became evident even among those not…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Biden’s Pointless Asian Summit
Let us consider the grist of the talks the U.S. president hosted at the presidential retreat in Maryland last week. This will not take long. My goodness. President Joe Biden and the press serving his regime pumped so much hot air into…
The US Press, Spooks & the Church Committee
Nineteen fifty-three was a peculiar year for The Washington Post to question the C.I.A.’s drift into activist intrigues, writes Patrick Lawrence in this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Journalists and Their Shadows. On Jan. 9, 1953, The Washington Post published an editorial we can read all…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: A Yellen in the China Shop
Janet Yellen did an excellent job during her just-completed four-day visit to Beijing, we are now able to read in the corporate press. The Treasury secretary managed not to break any more China in the China shop. This counts as…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Breaking Bread with Authoritarians
In his way, India’s prime minister is as bad as some of the old Latin American dictators who got plenty of American support but never an evening meal — and certainly no cardamon-flavored strawberry shortcake for dessert. “For the first…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Media’s Fatal Compromises
It is no longer enough to tether correspondents to the perspective of the military from whose side they report. We appear to be on the way to having wars fought — huge, bloody, consequential wars — without any witnesses. The…