Alexander Cockburn's Blog, page 3

The End of America's Armies for 07/13/2012

Retired Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, bounced out of his job for revels in Paris as witnessed by Rolling Stone, has recycled a perennial chestnut: Bring back the draft — i.e., a conscripted military, not the volunteer military of today.

These days, McChrystal teaches at Yale University with what must be a protection unique in the annals of academic freedom. Everything he tells his st ...

Updated: Fri Jul 13, 2012

[image error]

Epitaph to a Dead Movement for 07/06/2012

It was very hard not to be swept away by the Occupy movement, which established itself in New York's Zuccotti Park last September and soon spread to Oakland, Calif., Chicago, London and Madrid. And indeed most people didn't resist its allure. Leninists threw aside their Marxist primers on party organization and drained the full anarchist cocktail.

The Occupiers seemed to have a complicat ...

Updated: Fri Jul 06, 2012

[image error]

Epitaph to a Dead Movement for 07/05/2012

It was very hard not to be swept away by the Occupy movement, which established itself in New York's Zuccotti Park last September and soon spread to Oakland, Calif., Chicago, London and Madrid. And indeed most people didn't resist its allure. Leninists threw aside their Marxist primers on party organization and drained the full anarchist cocktail.

The Occupiers seemed to have a complicat ...

Updated: Thu Jul 05, 2012

[image error]

The Affordable Care Act: Decision Effects for 06/29/2012

It's tempting to say the Affordable Care Act decision spells the end of the Romney candidacy. The Mormon millionaire was entirely blindsided by yesterday's long-awaited verdict from the U.S. Supreme Court, as were almost all Republicans who had spent months complacently totting up a conservative majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, and then Lo! here's Roberts saying the famou ...

Updated: Fri Jun 29, 2012

[image error]

The Ongoing Farce of the Green Summits for 06/22/2012

The predictable word is in from Rio de Janeiro: failure. The conference 20 years on from the huge 1992 Earth Summit in Rio has been unable to produce even the pretense of an energetic verbal commitment of the world's community to sustainable principles.

The reason? These conferences have always been a fraud, lofted on excited green rhetoric and larded with ominous advisories that "t ...

Updated: Fri Jun 22, 2012

[image error]

Cuomo's Proposal for 06/15/2012

Last week there was much rejoicing when Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, flanked by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, came out in support of ending the practice of arresting individuals for possessing small amounts of marijuana in public view.

The details here are very important. These arrests come in consequence of stop-and-frisk police powers — used across ...

Updated: Fri Jun 15, 2012

[image error]

Cuomo's Proposal for 06/14/2012

Last week there was much rejoicing when Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, flanked by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, came out in support of ending the practice of arresting individuals for possessing small amounts of marijuana in public view.

The details here are very important. These arrests come in consequence of stop-and-frisk police powers — used across ...

Updated: Thu Jun 14, 2012

[image error]

Obama and Marijuana: A Great Betrayal? for 06/08/2012

A heart in love will decipher every squiggle in the letter as a kiss. In the final days of the 2008 campaign and in the opening ones of his administration, President Obama and his top legal aides seemed to the eager ears of marijuana legalizers on the West Coast to be opening the door to a new, sensible era.

Here was the basic line as dispensed by Attorney General Eric Holder on March 1 ...

Updated: Fri Jun 08, 2012

[image error]

Obama and Marijuana: A Great Betrayal? for 06/07/2012

A heart in love will decipher every squiggle in the letter as a kiss. In the final days of the 2008 campaign and in the opening ones of his administration, President Obama and his top legal aides seemed to the eager ears of marijuana legalizers on the West Coast to be opening the door to a new, sensible era.

Here was the basic line as dispensed by Attorney General Eric Holder on March 1 ...

Updated: Thu Jun 07, 2012

[image error]

Auctioning off the Presidency From the Pentagon Battlements for 06/01/2012

Let me whisk you to 1980 on one of Obama's miracle drones.

In the right-center we had incumbent President Jimmy Carter, derided as a man of peace, el wimpo.

True, his top foreign policy man was an unreconstructed Polish Cold War warrior burning to bring the Soviet Union to its knees. True, the two had launched the largest covert operation in the CIA's history — $3.5 billio ...

Updated: Fri Jun 01, 2012

[image error]