Alexander Cockburn

This page is on the journalist Alexander Cockburn. For the Lord Chief Justice of that name, see Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet.

Alexander Claud Cockburn (pronounced coburn) (born June 6, 1941) is a radical Irish commentator. He has lived in the United States for many years. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair he edits the political newsletter Counterpunch. He also writes the "Beat the Devil" column for The Nation, and a weekly syndicated column for the Los Angeles Times. He is a regular contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser.

Cockburn was born in Scotland and grew up in County Cork, Ireland. His father was the well-known Socialist author and journalist Claud Cockburn. After studying at Oxford, Alexander worked in London as a reporter and commentator, writing extensively for numerous publications, including The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Esquire, and Harper's. Cockburn was asked to leave The Village Voice after it had emerged that he had accepted money from Palestinian organizations without disclosing this in his middle east commentary. Cockburn is a strident opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks (even going so far as to cite them as evidence of a Tenth Crusade).

Cockburn's views have often put him at odds with other writers, especially fellow Nation columnists Eric Alterman and Katha Pollitt. He has been a vehement critic of every single military intervention by the United States in the last half century since the end of World War II. Some have accused him of hypocrisy on the grounds that he opposed Bill Clinton's restoring of the Haitian government after a coup during the 1990's and then opposed George W. Bush's suspected hand in delivering Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power once again in 2003. Cockburn's website, Counterpunch, has come under fire for allowing a number of radical writers to post commentary, including some who have claimed that Slobodan Milosevic did not commit war crimes, and that acts of alleged Serbian or Albanian genocide were manufactred as a prerequisite for war by the United States government and NATO. It should be noted that while Cockburn considers Bill Clinton a war criminal for his actions in Yugoslavia, and believes that the war was fought to further American interests in the Balkans, he has never asserted that genocide did not occur.[1], [2] But perhaps Cockburn's biggest rival is former Nation contributor Christopher Hitchens.[3], [4] This feud stems from Hitchens's senate testimony against Sidney Blumenthal, then advisor to President Clinton during the Lewinsky affair[5]; this action very nearly put Blumenthal in jail for a long time. Cockburn has never forgiven him for the betrayal.[6]

At times acerbic, Cockburn can also be gently ironic, once declaring Gerald Ford America's greatest president for doing the least damage and praising the Lewinsky scandal's entertainment value.[7]

Cockburn has two brothers, Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn who are also journalists.

Books

• Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death (1975)
• Smoke: Another Jimmy Carter Adventure (1978)
• Corruptions of Empire (1988)
• The Fate of Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon (1989)
• The Golden Age Is in Us: Journeys and Encounters (1995)
• Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (1998) (with Jeffrey St. Clair)
• Washington Babylon (1996)
• Five Days That Shook The World: The Battle for Seattle and Beyond (2000) (with Jeffrey St. Clair)
• Al Gore: A User's Manual (2000) (with Jeffrey St. Clair)
• Counterpunch: The Journalism That Rediscovers America (2002) (with Jeffrey St. Clair)
• Trials of Sex (with Jeffrey St. Clair)
• The Politics of Anti-Semitism 2003 (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair)

Compact disk

• Beating the Devil: The Incendiary Rants of Alexander Cockburn

External link

• Counterpunch website
• Explores his link to Scientology using a LEXIS/NEXUS search