PATRICK LAWRENCE: Power
Patrick Lawrence asks some pertinent questions of the American people. Are Americans going to sit around indefinitely eating potato chips while the State Department and Treasury starve Venezuelan children? Are Americans going to play video games while Israel fires U.S.–made…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Arc of Decline
U.S. leaders would rather accept ever-more extreme isolation as the price of power than surrender any of it. It is remarkable how quickly the Biden administration is acquiring its stamp — the watermark it will leave on our parchment when…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The US-Russia Summit
Two recent moves on Moscow’s side suggest that the encounter in Geneva will mark the start of a long and welcome process. Curious it was to read that the Russian judiciary ruled last Wednesday that Alexei Navalny’s political network is an extremist movement….
PATRICK LAWRENCE: 1948 — No Longer Shrouded in the Mists
What we see now is a purposeful program of terror and it is merely the latest, in form and intent, of what Palestinians have endured since the Nakba. The shattering events of the past few weeks in Israel, the West…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Biden’s Banner Headlines on Afghanistan Obscure US Motives
Exceptionalism and universalism are the third rails in the U.S.: Any public figure who questions either will suffer a kind of political electrocution. “’It is time to end the forever war.’” That is The New York Times quoting Joe Biden in a banner…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Biden’s Inhumanity on Syria
The U.S. hypocrisy to come will be even greater than anything tried by the Trump administration. For a time after Joe Biden took office not quite three months ago, among the questions raised was how the new administration would address…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Blundering Biden Team
What occurred between Washington and Moscow last week, and at a hotel in Anchorage, bears a significance that we must not miss. “Biden is a national embarrassment on foreign policy,” a colleague wrote in a note over the weekend. This…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: US Meddling in Hong Kong
An honorable democracy movement that held its head high for many decades now falls to Beijing’s heavy hand after U.S. meddling. Midway in a week of shocking news, I awakened last Wednesday to a piece in Asia Sentinel that made my heart…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Empire with a Human Face
The Biden people are unlikely to speak of a new cold war with China, but they appear likely to wage one all dressed up as a sophisticated trans–Pacific strategy. Those boneheaded Trump people explained their hostile, xenophobic, fated-to-fail policy toward…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Some Cherry Garcia, Please
The apartheid state’s swoon into freak-out mode since Ben & Jerry’s took its stand tells us all we need to know about BDS’s accumulating power. Cherry Garcia, please, two scoops. No make that Chocolate Fudge Brownie. No, I want Coconut…