Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn is co-editor of CounterPunch and a columnist for The Nation.
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Articles and Posts by Alexander Cockburn:

• Will WikiLeaks Help End the Afghan War?(12)

  The brave hope of the soldier who sent 92,000 secret documents to WikiLeaks was that the disclosure of willful, casual slaughter of civilians by coalition personnel (with ensuing cover-ups), the utter failure of “nation-building,” the venality and corruption of the coalition’s Afghan allies and the complicity of Pakistan’s intelligence services with the Taliban would cause a wave of revulsion in the United States and among its coalition allies against the war.

• The Fall of Obama(21)

  The man who seized the White House by fomenting a mood of irrational expectation is now facing the bitter price exacted by reality. The reality is that there can be no “good” American president. It’s an impossible hand to play. Obama is close to being finished.

• Those Russian Spies: Were They Really a Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight?(4)

  There’s been ripe chortling about the spy network run in the USA by the Russian SVR—successor to the KGB in the area of foreign intelligence. The 11 accused were supposedly a bunch of bumblers so deficient in remitting secrets to Moscow across nearly a decade that the FBI can’t even muster the evidence to charge them with espionage.

• Volcanoes, Climate and the Limits of Computer Modeling(17)

  Scarce a week goes by without some scaremongering headline about climate change, premised on apocalyptic conclusions drawn from a computer-generated climate model. Modeling lies at the heart of the whole vast climate-change industry, an industry sparked by the big government-backed computer modeling centers in the U.S. and U.K.

• Are Obama and Hillary Clinton Really Bumblers?(2)

  Are they really bumblers? The opinion columns quiver with reproofs for maladroit handling of foreign policy by President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Those who cherished foolish illusions that Obama’s election presaged a substantive shift to the left in foreign policy fret about “worrisome signs” that this is not the case.

• Stack’s Afterlife(5)

  “I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

  Joe Stack was now 30 words from the end of his life.

• Calling Monica Lewinsky! You May Have To Get Back on Your Knees(3)

  The American political system is nicely balanced so that certain foul deeds—like throwing poor women off the welfare rolls, or cutting old people’s pensions—are handed off to Democrats, who put on a better act, tears streaming down their faces as they protest that they must kill in order to be kind.

• Fifty Years After Greensboro, Whatever Happened to the American Left?(21)

  Fifty years ago this month, history took a great leap forward. On Feb. 1, 1960, four black students from Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina sat down at a segregated lunch counter in Woolworths department store in Greensboro, N.C. The chairs were for whites. Blacks had to stand and eat. A day later, the four young black men returned, with 25 more students.

• State of the Union(17)

  You can see how seriously Obama is taking the hot populist temper of the American people and their eagerness to strangle every banker with the entrails of every insurance executive.

• Heading Back into Clinton-time(4)

  What lies ahead politically? Look for an answer back in the ’90s. Even if the Republicans don’t take over after the midterm elections, the Democratic Party now in Congress is dominated by politicians fashioned in the Clinton era, nourished by such heirs of Aristotle as Rahm Emanuel and, before him, Tony Coelho.