Letter

In response to Trump's War Without Purpose is Everyone's Problem

Havin' a lend?

James Curran of the US Studies Centre sounds like he was born yesterday. Though making the right noises re the madness of the US/Israeli campaign, he qualifies that by pointing to the “mendacity” of Iran in the region. Iranian leadership , according to Jim, is “sordid”, “poisonous” and “demented”, quite unlike the west’s ally Saudi Arabia apparently.

Presumably, such impressions, and the general public shares them, are formed by the media, how else? And in that regard the idealism of the Lipmann quotation should make us all smile if not guffaw:

“[T]he news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumour, suspicion, clues, hopes and fears…….The task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct”.

Jim lives in Australia, is he havin’ a lend?

— Terence O'Connell from Paddington