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Posts published by “Alexander Cockburn”

Goodbye to All That

Somewhere around mid-November the Y2K whimpering died down out of sheer exhaustion. Humboldt county is calm. A couple of weeks ago I asked the amiable Jim, proprietor of Western Chainsaw in Eureka, how many generators…

Back to School

Nabbed back in March for speeding in my 1964 station wagon (“I didn’t think this old wreck would go that fast,” the Highway Patrol Officer said sarcastically as he wrote me up for a 78…

Drugs, School and Killers

Remember Soma? It was the drug administered to the citizens of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I thought of it as a 15-year-old girl attending a very ritzy liberal arts school in the Northeast told…

The China Trade

One of the most enduring farces in American foreign policy has been underway in China this week: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright allegedly engaging in tough talk about human rights. Just how tough the talk…

Clinton’s Acquittal

There are two ways to look at Bill Clinton’s persecution, both of them valid, one inspiriting and the other dismal. The inspiriting truth about the long scandal, terminated by senatorial acquittal of the president last…

National Notes

Many people go through life rehearsing a role they feel that the fates have in store for them, and I've long thought that Christopher Hitchens has been asking himself for years how it would feel to plant the Judas kiss

Guinea Pigs

The New York Post has, quite rightly, been raising a fuss over the disclosure that patients in the state health system are being dosed with experimental drugs. The Post has been breaking hair-raising stories about…

Hoist Up the Old John D.

Years ago I persuaded Andrew Kopkind to help me drive a 1962 Imperial LeBaron from Coral Gables to Vermont. We had not been many hours on the road before Andrew’s skills in using his credit…

My Lai Massacre: The Shame That Survives

On March 16, 1968, US soldiers killed 504 Vietnamese villagers on March 16, 1968. The 30th anniversary in 1998 was an opportunity to to give Americans a warm glow. The warmth came of course from…

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