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Posts published by “Alexander Cockburn”

Acting Responsible

Look on the bright side. They finally found a WMD. Not in the desert wastes of Iraq, nor in the cellar of one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. Not in an Iranian nuclear facility. In Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear.

Goodbye to 2009, Hello to 2010: Year of the Tiger

Once again hands are raised in stupefaction. How could they have missed him — meaning in this case Umar Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian bomber on that flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Why, his own father —…

Disappointments In Samarra

Hazlitt got gloomily drunk for a fortnight after the battle of Waterloo, accurately anticipating that decades of reaction lay ahead, now that Boney had been definitely put away, with the Holy Alliance in the saddle…

Turning Tricks; Cashing In On Fear

In the early 1970s the UN spearheaded the progressive notion of a new world economic order, one that would try to level the playing field between the First World and the Third. The neoliberal onslaughts…

Not Even a Peanut

 A friend down the coast here in California called Wednesday to say that her mother, 95, had fallen, cracked her ribs, got a cough and told her daughters, “That’s it. I’m checking out.” She’s given…

War Cries From a Defeated Man

Ritual trumphalism about America’s righteous mission in the closing sentences of his speech did not dispel the distinct impression during President Obama’s 33-minute address to cadets at West Point Tuesday night that we were listening…

The Auld Triangle Goes Jingle Jangle

Obama’s dipped below 50% in public approval, which — so the pollsters tell us — is nothing particu­larly unusual for a new president at this stage of the game. This week, he’s scheduled to announce…

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