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…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Finally Time for DNC Email Evidence
The crumbling of Russiagate focuses attention on the considerable evidence that Russian intelligence agencies charged with intrusion into DNC servers had nothing to do with it. Three years after the narrative we call Russiagate was framed and incessantly promoted, it…
The Battle for Our Minds
There are battlefields in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere, but given the state of corporate media, perhaps the most consequential battle now being fought is for our minds, says Patrick Lawrence. After reading The New York Times piece “The Plot to Subvert an…
More than a muckraker: Robert Parry believed in the possibilities of our craft
A legendary reporter who broke the Iran-contra story, Bob Parry left the mainstream media and blazed his own path When news of Robert Parry’s death reached me a week ago, I had to stop working for a long time. I…
On Writers, the Media, and the Corruptions of Power
Joel Whitney, whose book Finks is about the CIA’s subversion of US culture, talks about the scars left by the Cold War. In Part 1 of my exchange with Joel Whitney, conducted shortly after OR Books published Finks: How the CIA Tricked the…
Are We Witnessing a Coup Operation Against the Trump White House?
Our intelligence apparatus is doing far more than stoking paranoia about the Russian bogeyman—it’s threatening democracy. A couple of books come to mind amid the relentless leaks emanating from the spooks on either side of the Potomac and, not to…
Clinton, Gen. Allen and alarmist declarations: The media must call out leaders for their dangerous fictions
A couple of remarkable things got said on television last Sunday morning. Both seemed to have slipped into the record without much comment. Let us keep the record straight, then — the never-ending task when you have a corporatized press…
The Syria dilemma: Dissecting the leaked diplomats memo calling for Obama to get tougher on Assad
Something smells fishy when a hawkish State Dept. memo “leaks” to the Times on the eve of Sec. Clinton’s nomination It has been clear for some time that the Syria conflict was bound to turn into some magnitude of Waterloo…
Our Syria policy is still a mess: These are the dots the media refuses to connect
Russia’s foreign minister reveals a strange talk with John Kerry, and explains much about American foreign policy MOSCOW—Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s widely respected foreign minister, dropped a big one here last weekend. After an hour-long conversation with John Kerry, Lavrov asserted…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Iranian Tankers & the Age of Interdiction
Two forms of interdiction — the steady expansion of U.S. sanctions and our stunning drift toward unmasked censorship — have begun to intersect. Over the weekend, a sixth Iranian cargo ship entered Venezuelan waters and is due to dock shortly. It follows…