Cockburn's skepticism has met with two replies that I know of, ... one of them I can't find, but I might have read it on Znet, or on Cockburn's own "Counterpunch." It basically said that most of Cockburn's sources get their money from big oil. To me, that is just a cause for concern, it doesn't automatically discredit them. (Broken clocks right twice a day and all that.)
The other is this one, by George Monbiot: "The Conspiracy Widens" is much more devastating. It pokes far larger holes into Cockburn's authorities, and you can read it if you wish. My reason for posting today is to answer Monbiot's sadness in having to refute Cockburn:
I sign off with sadness. I have followed Alexander Cockburn's writing for many years and I have admired it. His has been an important and persuasive voice on many progressive issues. But I can no longer trust it. I realise that he is blinded by a conviction that he remains right whatever the facts might say. In his determination to admit nothing, he will cling to any straw, including the craziest fulminations of the ultra-right, and he will abandon the rigor and scepticism that once informed his journalism. I feel this as a loss. I am sure I am not the only one.
The thing is, Cockburn will still be a source for me as a critic of US empire and global capitalism. I've known for a long time that Cockburn is a Leninist, and he makes quiet apologies for the Soviet Union, and espouses a revolutionary doctrine that is quite dangerous and has a record of extreme failure. I've known for a while that he thinks petroleum is a renewable resource (some old Harvard chemist says that it's naturally created, continuously, in the bowels of the earth). Cockburn will remain a good source of critical reporting on some things, and we'll just have to take the good with the bad.
I've read Maoist critiques of capitalist "development" theory and practice. We can read the hypocrite Rousseau on the beauty of humanity. I'll read Hitchens on atheism and Democratic perfidy.
Cockburn is not lost to us. He wasn't ours to begin with. He's an individual. At least (unlike Hitchens) he hasn't placed himself at the service of any ogres with this eccentricity.
6 comments:
Alexander Cockburn is a very intelligent man as is Hitchens.
When people start saying how can some one so smart be so stupid, I think they should look at themselves.
Here are some aticles for you to read, when you have time.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR2007061401050_pf.html
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-garden-of-good-and-evil/2007/06/16/1181414606757.html?page=fullpage#
Wayne,
I read your links. Did you read Monbiot's article about Cockburn?
Anyhow, i thought your two sources were laughable pieces of shit.
Notice, if you will, that the Washington Post piece ACCEPTS that global warming is a likely fact, and then goes on to make childish projections about milder winters in Buffalo NY, and vacation paradises in areas like Mongolia.
Sheer stupidity. If global warming is real, then the author has to also account for the projected (and highly likely) rising sea levels, which will devastate the hundreds of millions of people living in coastal areas. It could conceivably dwarf the deathtoll from that Tsunami a few years back. Hundreds of millions of lives. To say nothing of stronger hurricanes, and desertification of agricultural areas, and etc., etc.,
Which makes the second reading so tiresome. There is a lot more evidence that global warming is a possibility than there was evidence that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. And yet, the same sorts of people who swallowed that WMD bullshit want to have every "t" crossed and every "i" dotted, before they'll even think about altering our apparently sacred system of endless, mindless consumption.
(Either that, or they'll fart out childish nonsense like your Washington Post editorial.)
Hundreds of millions of people could drown, and people like you are prepared to accept the word of corrupt politicians and scientific hacks in the employ of the oil industry, ... just because.
The section:
"Monbiot says that he wants to 'make people so depressed about the state of the world that they stay in bed all day, thereby reducing their consumption of fossil fuel'. Strewth. I spent my childhood under the tutelage of deeply repressed Christian Brothers and priests, but I don't recall ever hearing anything quite so fun-denying, guilt-inflicting and self-flagellating as that."
Was particularly stupid. Monbiot was exaggerating for effect.
This is a real danger Wayne. And so far, all your side has to offer up is self-serving twaddle.
"If global warming is real" we should prepare for it, move people inland etc..
It is caused by the sun, not man made.
Wow! You know this for a fucking fact??
Find those WMDs yet? You have no credibility.
Here is but one refutation of this straw that you're clinging to:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192
"I've known for a long time that Cockburn is a Leninist, and he makes quiet apologies for the Soviet Union, and espouses a revolutionary doctrine that is quite dangerous and has a record of extreme failure."
It would be nice to see evidence for this. He frequently "defended" the Soviet Union against FALSE claims, since the false claims were of course aimed at discrediting socialism in general. The idea that he favors a police state is cretinous.
"Sheer stupidity. If global warming is real, then the author has to also account for the projected (and highly likely) rising sea levels, which will devastate the hundreds of millions of people living in coastal areas. It could conceivably dwarf the deathtoll from that Tsunami a few years back. Hundreds of millions of lives. To say nothing of stronger hurricanes, and desertification of agricultural areas, and etc., etc., "
The seas will not rise like a tsunami, even if they do rise.
I think even the "consensus authorities" reject the connection of Extreme Weather with warming; the warming is principally toward the poles (thus the rising seas) and wlll thus moderate the differences between the poles and the tropics, which drives violent storms.
"There is a lot more evidence that global warming is a possibility than there was evidence that Saddam Hussein had WMDs."
What the fuck does this have to do with A Cockburn.
"Monbiot was exaggerating for effect."
It's nice that the telegenic windbag GM is permitted to exaggerate for effect, but Cockburn isn't. It is plain that his purpose is to attack an infantile subordination of left wing ideas to a particular hypothesis which might or might not be true.
In response to:
"If global warming is real" we should prepare for it, move people inland etc..
It is caused by the sun, not man made.
thwap said...
Wow! You know this for a fucking fact??
Find those WMDs yet? You have no credibility.
But suppose it IS real and IS caused by something to do with the sun, and WILL have the effects that are described by Gore. We cannot decide what your principles are, until we hear what you will say then. If you say "in that case let Nature take its course" aren't you basically genocidal, on your own account? If you say, then "we must adopt an appropriate technical fix, like miltarizing the economy so that we can atomize all the coal and oil in the world and put it in orbit around the planet, etc."
"It would be nice to see evidence for this. He frequently 'defended' the Soviet Union against FALSE claims, since the false claims were of course aimed at discrediting socialism in general."
I've read two of his books and a number of his columns, ... I recall defences of Saint-Just, Robespierre, ... Stalinists in Spain, ... if he's not a Leninist, then my opinion is that he's awfully unclear about his political orientation.
"The idea that he favors a police state is cretinous."
Well, thanks. Whatever.
"The seas will not rise like a tsunami, even if they do rise."
Fantastic. I never said that they would. I said there'd be a similar death-toll.
"What the fuck does this have to do with A Cockburn."
Nothing. I was talking to Wayne.
"'Monbiot was exaggerating for effect.'
It's nice that the telegenic windbag GM is permitted to exaggerate for effect, but Cockburn isn't."
It's quite clear the section where the "telgenic windbag GM" is exaggerating for effect. If you can point to where Cockburn's claim that global warming is completely bogus is mere exaggerating for effect, I'd appreciate it. Until then, it's a good idea to not just throw contrarian shit around just to score any points you can.
btw: Nowhere do I say that I don't have a lot of respect for Cockburn. Just not for his anti-global warming stuff. Why the need to slag a respectable voice like Monbiot just because you disagree with him on something? Save it for the real idiots.
Re: What if it is something to do with the sun?
Well, this isn't too hard to figure out, ... that the sun is the culprit is a dubious proposition. When their is a possibility that we're destroying things for subsequent generations, we ought to feel obliged to find out if this is so, and do something about it.
I'm familiar with Cockburn's fears about corporate democracy taking advantage of global warming fears. However, these schemes themselves have little to do with the veracity of the theory of global warming, nor do they prove the veracity of his unaccredited, unpublished sources.
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