Alexander Cockburn

The Rise and Fall of a Radical JournalistHistory handed Alexander Cockburn a great opportunity, but he blew it

Ron Unz on Alexander Cockburn

Buckley’s Unlikely Heir

It was at Counterpunch that I first encountered the pungent military analysis of William Lind. When I once showed one of Lind’s articles to an acquaintance, he denounced Lind as an ignorant leftist, only to be shocked when I explained that Lind had had an illustrious career as a congressional staffer specializing in military reform and was also the longtime closest collaborator of Paul Weyrich, one of D.C.’s most prominent movement-conservative leaders.

I appreciated the thoughtful commentary on our Middle East policy by Kathleen and Bill Christison, former CIA analysts specializing in that region, and later discovered the same last name on articles of the same subject in back issues of National Review from the mid-1980s. NR’s loss was Counterpunch’s gain.

Similarly, Paul Craig Roberts had for decades been one of the leading conservative intellectual figures at the intersection of academics and policy, playing a major role in crafting the economic policies of the Reagan administration and holding a variety of top-ranking appointments in the conservative firmament, while being one of the most widely distributed national columnists. But after he refused to toe the line following 9/11, he was ruthlessly purged, and his important voice might have been lost if Counterpunch and a few other websites had not provided him a venue.

Add the names Ray McGovern, Winslow Wheeler, Franklin Spinney, Pierre Sprey, and a few others to this list, and it sometimes seemed like half the Counterpunch articles I read were by authors with unassailable national-intelligence, military-affairs, or even movement-conservative credentials. Purged, blacklisted, or simply ignored by Conservativism, Inc., they often relied upon Alex’s webzine as the primary distributor of their well-informed writings. Once or twice I joked with Alex that perhaps he was actually Bill Buckley’s truest heir.

Dr. Fleming's Tribute to Alexander Cockburn

Alex Cockburn, RIP

Another of his sins was his consistency. When the rest of the anti-war left got on the bandwagon for American imperialism, Cockburn continued to criticize American's crusades to remake the world in his image. On the other hand, he also consistently defended little people from the gigantic interests of monopoly business and monopoly government. He even opposed gun control, using the Chestertonian argument that it was simply an attempt to disarm and enslave the people. Worst of all, perhaps, in the eyes of the phony left, was the rational skepticism he applied to the religion of Global Warming.

You can see some more tributes, written by contributors to Mr. Cockburn's magazine and website, at Counterpunch. (Dave Lindorff, No RIP For Alexander Cockburn - apparently he was once a Catholic. Kyrie Eleison.)

Unexpected News.

Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch passes. (Prompted by Rebellion.)

Edit. Justin Raimondo

Items of Interest, 14 April 2012

KunstlerCast #201: Listener Mailbag (mp3)
Light Pollution, the Printed Page v. the Screen & More

Commodification and consumerism: Who stole fun? by Lisa Meekison (EB)

Liberty with a Backbone

Peter Hitchens, 'Cushty, easily done!' A criminal's mocking words that sum up our injustice system

Relocalization:
Going Local in an Age of Globalization (with Michael Schuman)

Is it too late for sustainable development?

Counterpunch:
ALEXANDER COCKBURN, Farewell Gastro-Porn: Is the Foodie Frenzy Finally Fizzling Out?
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, World’s Apex Bully Leads World Into Lawlessness
GARETH PORTER, U.S.-Israel Deal to Demand Qom Closure Threatens Nuclear Talks

Catholic:
Cardinal Burke: Employers who Provide Contraceptives Cooperating with Sin


Partisanship and Religious Freedom
The Bishops' Statement on Religious Freedom and Widespread Misunderstanding of the State of Free Exercise



Feminism:
Feminism is failutre
The career neg
Why Rosen's remark was significant
Down with Gender Studies!

doug111:

I’ve always thought that feminists trying to make a moral issue out of the basic nature of males’ sexual attraction to females particularly on first impression by calling it “objectification” was utter nonsense. Yeah we’re attracted by the visual, in particular young, 0.7 or lower waist to hips ratio, symmetrical and healthy looking beauty. We have individual preferences particularly at the higher levels of beauty but also a whole lot of commonality in what men find most attractive. Trying to shame that by calling it “objectifying” women is just absurd. Men are different from women, and no that’s not mostly a social construct.

Retrenched:

Yep. It’s not really “patriarchy” that feminists hate, it’s maleness itself.

Given the role that the male plays in courtship (as the pursuer) it makes sense that he would rely on visual cues to determine first of all whether a woman is healthy and fertile before choosing her as a possible mate?

Alexander Cockburn, Fashion Critic

And his thoughts on the White House's OBL Affair: A Volcano of Lies.

Footnote: Peering briefly at the royal nuptials in a house high up in the mountains above Malibu, I was surprised to see how spectacularly tacky the British upper classes have become. They looked very vulgar. The appalling cuteness of the Aston Martin supplied the coup de grace.  The groom didn’t know how to stand up properly. Contrary to effusive comparisons,  the bride’s much touted dress from the atelier of the wildly overpraised late Alexander McQueen, was a far cry from Grace Kelly’s, designed by Helen Rose, who had dressed her in High Society and The Swan. The bride’s headdress hung like a dishrag.  The only vestments born with confidence and aplomb were those of the churchmen. The Archbishop of Canterbury, with his emphatic beard and specs, had a splendid cope. His voice was confident. I’d like to see him in debate with one of Teheran’s ayatollahs. But the Anglo actresses watching the event on our mountain were ecstatic. My daughter Daisy, returning to London two days later, reported that the young women she was encountering were all swept away by the event and eager for marriage. 

Alexander Cockburn on the Civil War

Indelible Passions: From the Easter Rising to the American Civil War

Also from the weekend edition of Counterpunch online:
Mike Whitney, Welcome to Banktopia

Gavan McCormack, Can There be an End to Japan as a Nuclear State?

Ralph Nader, Stripmining American Jobs

Saul Landau / Jack Willis, The People Who Brought You Fukushima

Alexander Cockburn, The Fall of Obama

Counterpunch:

It is not Obama’s fault that for 30 years America’s policy – under Reagan, both Bushes and Bill Clinton – has been to export jobs permanently to the Third World. The jobs that Americans now desperately seek are no longer here, in the homeland, and never will be. They’re in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Indonesia.

No stimulus program, giving money to cement contractors to fix potholes along the federal interstate highway system, is going to bring those jobs back. Highly trained tool and die workers, the aristocrats of the manufacturing sector, are flipping hamburgers – at best – for $7.50 an hour because U.S. corporations sent their jobs to Guangzhou, with the approval of politicians flush with the money of the “free trade” lobby.

It is not Obama’s fault that across 30 years more and more money has floated up to the apex of the social pyramid till America is heading back to where it was in the 1880s, a nation of tramps and millionaires. It’s not his fault that every tax break, every regulation, every judicial decision tilts toward business and the rich. That was the neoliberal America conjured into malign vitality back in the mid 1970s.

But it is Obama’s fault that he did not understand this, that always, from the getgo, he flattered Americans with paeans to their greatness, without adequate warning of the political and corporate corruption destroying America and the resistance he would face if he really fought against the prevailing arrangements that were destroying America. He offered them a free and easy pass to a better future, and now they see that the promise was empty.

It’s Obama’s fault, too, that, as a communicator, he cannot rally and inspire the nation from its fears. From his earliest years he has schooled himself not to be excitable, not to be an angry black man who would be alarming to his white friends at Harvard and his later corporate patrons. Self-control was his passport to the guardians of the system, who were desperate to find a symbolic leader to restore America’s credibility in the world after the disasters of the Bush era. He is too cool.

So, now Americans in increasing numbers have lost confidence in him. For the first time in the polls negative assessments outnumber the positive. He no longer commands trust. His support is drifting down to 40 per cent. The straddle that allowed him to flatter corporate chieftains at the same time as blue-collar workers now seems like the most vapid opportunism. The casual campaign pledge to wipe out al-Quaida in Afghanistan is now being cashed out in a disastrous campaign viewed with dismay by a majority of Americans.

The polls portend disaster. It now looks as though the Republicans may well recapture not only the House but, conceivably, the Senate as well. The public mood is so contrarian that, even though polls show that voters think the Democrats may well have better solutions on the economy than Republicans, they will vote against incumbent Democrats in the midterm elections next fall. They just want to throw the bums out.

Obama has sought out Bill Clinton to advise him in this desperate hour. If Clinton is frank, he will remind Obama that his own hopes for a progressive first term were destroyed by the failure of his health reform in the spring of 1993. By August of that year, he was importing a Republican, David Gergen, to run the White House.

Obama had his window of opportunity last year, when he could have made jobs and financial reform his prime objectives. That’s what Americans hoped for. Mesmerized by economic advisers who were creatures of the banks, he instead plunged into the Sargasso Sea of “health reform,” wasted the better part of a year, and ended up with something that pleases no one.

More from the weekend edition:
John Ross, In the Basement of Mexican Justice, No One is Innocent
Chase Madar, Keep Cops Out of Schools: New York's Failed Experiment
Andrew Cockburn, Worth It? the Human Price of Sanctions
Ralph Nader, Delta Blues: Can the Iranian Model Save Mississippi?
Dave Lindorff, Cap and Blow?
Missy Beattie, Marketing Peace and War
Michael Barker, Foundations and Social Change: an Interview with Diana Johnstone
Stewart J. Lawrence, Is Obama Backing Away From a Sweeping Immigration Legalization
Program?
Sherwood Ross, What Tea Partiers Owe Progressives

Counterpunch roundup for the week

Alexander Cockburn, The Cover-Ups That Exploded
Michael Hudson, The Looming European Debt Wars
Mike Whitney, Give Greenspan an Oscar
Saul Landau, The Most Dangerous Man in the World
Alan Farago, Why They Call It King Coal
Andrew Cockburn, Financial Reform Bids Collapse Into Farce
Gareth Porter, Killings and Cover-Ups in Afghanistan
Dean Baker, The Myth of Market Fundamentalism
Mike Whitney, China's Flawed Economic Model
Ralph Nader, Becky McClain's Crusade Against Pfizer
Dave Lindorff, Welcome to Obama's War

Counterpunch updates

A lot of good articles with the weekend edition:

The Economic Velociraptors By ANDREW COCKBURN
"We Don't Want a Bunch of Angry Teamsters Showing Up at Our Doors!"

The Goat in the Clearing By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Government of Lawyers Spit on Law By SAUL LANDAU
Assassination, Inc.

A Pitiless, Punitive Giant By FRAN SHOR
Dumb Power in the Af-Pak War

Greece Signs Its National Suicide Pact By MARSHALL AUERBACK
The High Priests of Fiscal Rectitude Win Again

Health Insurance Death Spiral By JOSEPH SHER
What the Blue Cross Rate Hike Really Means

Empire of the Sunset By RANDALL AMSTER
The Point of No Return

Obama's Drug War Budget By BILL PIPER
Looking a Lot Like Bush's

How Blackwater Built Morale By MISSY BEATTIE
Strippers, Prostitutes and Murder

The Supremes Bow to King Corporation
By RALPH NADER

There is a glimmer of hope and a touch of reality in yesterday's Supreme Court decision. Unfortunately it is the powerful 90 page dissent in this case by Justice Stevens joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. Justice Stevens recognizes the power corporations wield in our political economy. Justice Stevens finds it "absurd to think that the First Amendment prohibits legislatures from taking into account the corporate identity of a sponsor of electoral advocacy." He flatly declares that, "The Court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation."

He notes that the, Framers of our Constitution "had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind." Right he is, for the words "corporation" or "company" do not exist in our Constitution.

Were the protections of the First Amendment understood by any of the parties ratifying the Constitution as extending to juridical persons? If there is nothing in the document itself to warrant this interpretation, is there anything in the common law of the time? If not, then is not the ruling by the "conservatives" dependent upon a reading that is imposed upon the Constitution? How can this be originalist?

Alexander Cockburn:

This being America, the U.S. Supreme Court returned fire that same Thursday with its Citizens United v. FEC decision striking down ancient laws and precedents and giving corporations their First Amendment rights to have nine fingers on the nation’s political windpipe instead of eight – which was the status quo ante which editorialists bizarrely lament as a Golden Age of electoral probity, only now destroyed by Chief Justice Roberts and his black-hat gang of judicial activists. There’s doleful talk of a “return to the era of the Robber Barons”. I thought we had Barons’ Homecoming a generation ago, though Citizens United v FEC does, even more brazenly than usual, blare the message that in America corporations rule and that the Supreme Court is their errand boy.

Coakley Loses and a Good Job Too by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Because the Democratic majority in the US senate is now reduced to 59, the common prediction is that the Democrats' health reform bill is doomed, since it takes 60 votes to override a filibuster, which the Republicans would mount to kill the bill. More likely is that the insurance companie , (which dictated the basic terms of the "reform" and stands to gain millions of new customers who will be forced by law to take out health insurance), will be loath to throw away months of successful lobbying and will dictate some new "compromise" that will allow both Republicans and Democrats to claim victory. Obama will delightedly sign any insurance bill landing on his desk bearing the necessary label, "reform".

Why I Voted for the Republican in Massachusetts By JOHN V. WALSH