Alexander Cockburn Scintillates in San Francisco

San Francisco
December 7, 2007

Yesterday evening the famed contrarian, prolific political essayist, and editor of Counterpunch Alexander Cockburn spoke in San Francisco's Mission District at Station 40, one of the neighborhood's excellent venues for young radicals and bohemians.

At his Counterpunch website, Cockburn and his co-editor Jeffrey St. Clair boast of having "many friends and all the right enemies" and guarantee that no one will ever see either of them "on the pundit line up at MSNBC."

At Station 40, Cockburn found many friends among the attendees who eschewed the commonplace and braved the rain to find extraordinary entertainment and information. None in his audience were to be disappointed.

Cockburn exuberantly and generously expounded upon a variety of topics with the versatility of a master Bee bop musician. With turns of humorous wit and dead seriousness, he challenged his audience's sense of reality on topics ranging from global warming, economic forces, conspiracies, current political forces, and his own sense of optimism (in spite of his appraisal that the U.S. political Left is in bad shape).

Some highlights:

Cockburn expressed his surprise that the determined neocons never "found" any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He asked, "Couldn't somebody have kicked one off the back of a truck?"

Cockburn declared that the recent National Intelligence Estimate that revealed that Iran had completely abandoned a nuclear weapons program will make it virtually impossible for the Neocon administration in Washington to pursue its alleged plans to attack Iran.

He warned of recent moves the government is making to clamp down on freedom of speech, which he said could put Counterpunch out of business overnight.

He had scathing words for the Democratic Party and neoliberals which he blamed for paving the way toward Bush and the neocons.

He called Dennis Kucinich "the little engine that couldn't" because of the way Kucinich fell into line behind Kerry in 2004.

He declared that he was no fan of Naomi Klein, the author of the widely acclaimed Shock Doctrine, but lamented the paucity and influence of serious economists on the Left.

He derided Al Gore as a "whore of the nuclear energy industry-- and his hawkishness during the first Iraq war.

He criticized the general lardishness of the modern enviornment movement which he said was dependent on charitable foundation support-- and of many university professors, describing tenure as a "chastening institution."

He advised the Left to become more fearless, and to reassert a vision of global justice that can talk once again about the redistribution of wealth.

Alexander Cockburn said that he would be in San Francisco again on Saturday and hoped to attend Cindy Sheehan's open house at her new campaign headquarters.