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: 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…
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: The USA’s Soviet-Style President
We are in for 19 months of relentless, insultingly transparent spin by way of which a patently incompetent man will be purveyed as commander in chief for another four years. Joe Biden announces — via a video, not in person…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Dimming the Lights
Two U.S. universities have recently taken the cultivation of ignorance to new lows, although at this point one hesitates to make any assumption as to where the bottom lies. Somewhere along the line, the thought seems to have taken hold among…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: A War of Rhetoric & Reality
Washington put us all on notice when Zelensky got to town: It has no intention of seeking a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis and every intention of recommitting indefinitely to its ideological war. Passing through Austin, Texas, the other night, we had…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: War as Presentation
As the U.S. midterm elections approach, the gap between Western media’s depiction of the war in Ukraine and the actual war waged on the ground appears to be widening more dramatically. We are urged at every turn to dismiss everything Vladimir Putin…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: 21st Century Order
As a piece of the new world order that is under construction, Putin’s trip to Tehran last week was of singular importance. At last we were able to read, last week, a New York Times story that concerned the Russians but not…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Imaginary War
It began when the Biden regime and the press misrepresented Russian aims in Ukraine. All else has flowed from it. What were the policy cliques, “the intelligence community” and the press that serves both going to do when the kind…
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,…