Alexander Cockburn from Creators Syndicate

Time for the Tumbrils! for 02/10/2012

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Back in the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse pointed out in one of his books that the Pentagon had given up on verbs. Pentagonese consisted of clotted groups of nouns, marching along in groups of three or four. Verbs, which connected nouns in purposive thrust, were regarded as unreliable and probably subversive. They talked too much, gave too much away.

Despite the Pentagon's best efforts, linguis ...

Updated: Fri Feb 10, 2012

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The Port Huron Statement -- 50 Years on for 02/03/2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Fifty years ago, a group of students in the American Midwest issued a document rather portentously titled "The Port Huron Statement." It was the founding manifesto of Students for a Democratic Society and became one of the most famous documents of that momentous and creative decade.

Read any history of the upsurges in the United States in the 1960s written over the past three d ...

Updated: Fri Feb 03, 2012

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Obama's Lackluster State of the Union for 01/27/2012

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Does one await a presidential State of the Union address with keen anticipation? It's like saying one looks forward to taking a niece to "The Nutcracker." The last time I truly enjoyed one — the speech, not the ballet — was Bill Clinton's in 1998, and it wasn't because of anything he said. It was his terrific aplomb, despite the fact that the Monica Lewinsky scandal was br ...

Updated: Fri Jan 27, 2012

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Mitt's Romney's Gingrich Nightmare for 01/20/2012

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Poor Romney. He's back in the Newt nightmare. Here comes the portly Georgian, brushing aside the guards outside Romney's hotel suite, kicking open the bedroom door, seizing Romney by the throat ... Aaaargh! And then Romney is awake, realizing that this is a cold-sweat nightmare that will last ... maybe until they close in Florida on Jan. 31; maybe until Super Tuesday on March 6, when nine state ...

Updated: Fri Jan 20, 2012

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War on Iran: It's Not a Matter of “If” for 01/13/2012

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The world's press is choc-a-bloc with “if” questions about Iran and war. Will Israel attack? Is Obama, coerced by domestic politics in an election year, being dragged into war by the Israel lobby? Will he lunch the bombers? Is the strategy to force Iran into a corner, methodically demolishing its economy by embargoes and sanctions, so that in the end a desperate Iran strikes back?

As wit ...

Updated: Fri Jan 13, 2012

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He Signed It on the Dotted Line for 01/06/2012

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

America changed as the new year stumbled across the threshold, but the big shift didn't get much press, which is easy to understand. Can there be a deader news day than a New Year's Eve that falls on a weekend? Besides, alive or dead, habeas corpus has never been a topic to set news editors on fire.

The change came with the whisper of Barack Obama's pen, as he signed into law the Nationa ...

Updated: Fri Jan 06, 2012

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Loom of the Jackboot: Obama Gives Military Extreme Powers for 12/23/2011

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Too bad Kim Jong-il kicked the bucket last weekend. If the divine hand that laid low the North Korean leader had held off for a week or so, Kim would have been sustained by the news that President Obama had signed into law a bill that puts the United States not immeasurably far from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in contempt of constitutional protections for its citizens or constitut ...

Updated: Fri Dec 23, 2011

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Suffer the Little Children for 12/16/2011

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Newt Gingrich, who recently admitted that his own childhood was comfortable, seems to have a problem with youth — poor youth, that is. Back in 1994, the Gingrich master plan to shrink the welfare rolls was to ship the children of the poor off to orphanages. He told a Harvard audience not so long ago that child labor laws are "truly stupid," and schools should fire janitors and r ...

Updated: Fri Dec 16, 2011

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Barack Obama Plays the Teddy Roosevelt Card a Little Late for 12/09/2011

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

When in doubt, wheel on Teddy Roosevelt. It's article one in every Democratic president's playbook. Roosevelt was president from 1901 to 1909. He was manly; he ranched in North Dakota and explored the Amazon. He was a rabid imperialist, charging up San Juan Hill and sending the Great White Fleet round the world. And he loved the wilderness — so long as it was suitably cleansed of Indians. ...

Updated: Fri Dec 09, 2011

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The People vs. 'Europe' for 12/02/2011

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

It looks as though the eurozone may be in a decisive meltdown, which is just fine in my book. The sooner we get back to francs, lire, punts, drachmas and the rest of the old sovereign currencies, the better.

It used to be as much a part of going to France to change money and be handed a bundle of notes featuring the devious Cardinal Richelieu as choking on Gauloise smoke. Instead, those ...

Updated: Fri Dec 02, 2011

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Thrown Out of Their Camps, Can the Occupiers Return Stronger? for 11/18/2011

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

From Manhattan, to Nashville, to St. Louis, to Portland, Ore., to Oakland, Calif., the police this week moved in to clear out the Occupy Wall Street protesters from the various downtown plazas or squares where they'd established their peaceable camps. Mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, had earlier acknowledged a conference call between 18 mayors across the U.S. discussing strategy, and the mode elect ...

Updated: Fri Nov 18, 2011

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He's No Bill Clinton! for 11/11/2011

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

As he prepares to follow Gov. Rick Perry into the oubliette of history, Herman Cain can at least console himself that as an alleged harasser of women, his was certainly a classier act than that of a man who not only got elected president in 1992, but was triumphantly re-elected in 1996 by 47.5 million Americans armed with the knowledge that if you left your wife at the table next to Gov. Bill C ...

Updated: Fri Nov 11, 2011

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America's Crisis -- Has Anyone Got the Slightest Idea What to Do? for 11/04/2011

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Just over a year from now, Americans will be deciding whether to re-elect President Barack Obama or ... probably Mitt Romney. In the latter case, this is to assume that Mitt, a Mormon and a family man, doesn't, like one of his rivals for the Republican nomination — Herman Cain — get caught up in the dreadful minefield known as "charges of sexual harassment." Study recent p ...

Updated: Fri Nov 04, 2011

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Will Tilikum, the ‘Killer Whale' Get His Day in Court? for 10/28/2011

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Remember Tilikum? Back in 2010, I likened this proud mammal — 6 tons and 22 feet long and the largest orca whale in captivity — to Spartacus. Tilikum was kidnapped by whale-slavers off Iceland at the age of two in 1983. Deliberately starved as part of his "training" in a Sealand tank in Victoria, Canada, Tilikum has spent the past 19 years in SeaWorld, Orlando Fla. The wha ...

Updated: Fri Oct 28, 2011

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Welcome to Our Banana Republic and Its Global Panopticon for 10/21/2011

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The day I became a citizen of these United States, June 17, 2009, in the old Paramount Theater in downtown Oakland, I raised my right hand and swore that I "absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constituti ...

Updated: Fri Oct 21, 2011

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War with the U.S. Is of No Interest to Iran; Who Invented This Absurd Plot? for 10/14/2011

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Even by the forgiving standards of American credulity, the supposed Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. is spectacularly ludicrous. That doesn't mean it isn't a sinister harbinger of a new crisis. Why would Iran want to kill the Saudi envoy — the mild-mannered functionary Adel al-Jubeir? To kill any ambassador — particularly a Saudi ambassador — is to ...

Updated: Fri Oct 14, 2011

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U.S. and Saudi Relations on Oil for 10/07/2011

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Pose a threat to the stability of Saudi Arabia, as the Shiite upsurges are now doing in Qatif and al-Awamiyah in the country's oil-rich Eastern Province, and you're brandishing a scalpel over the very heart of the long-term U.S. policy in the Middle East. The fall of America's ally, the Shah of Iran, in 1979 only magnified the strategic importance of Saudi Arabia.

In 1945, the chief of t ...

Updated: Fri Oct 07, 2011

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'Peak Oil' Takes A Deadly Blow for 09/30/2011

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

I've never believed in "peak oil." (The notion held with religious conviction by many on the left here, that world production is topping out — and will soon slide, plunging the world into economic chaos.) There's plenty of oil, with the constraints, as always, being the cost of recovery. Witness the vast new North Dakota oil shale fields. I regard oil "shortages" as co ...

Updated: Fri Sep 30, 2011

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Palestine Requests Statehood for 09/23/2011

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Was there ever a more preposterous spectacle than President Obama at the United Nations on Wednesday, solemnly telling the Palestinians that "There is no shortcut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades...Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations"? To which of course every Palestinian can gesture to the piled up wrec ...

Updated: Fri Sep 23, 2011

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Duane Buck, Rick Perry and the Politics of Death for 09/16/2011

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Simple rule for killers: If you are going to murder someone in the United States, don't try to get the job done in Texas. Keep the hostage alive in the car till New Mexico, which recently banned the death penalty, or press on to California, which retains the death penalty but makes available very large sums of state money — potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars — for a capabl ...

Updated: Fri Sep 16, 2011

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