#Alexander Cockburn dead, age 71

[3082 Dead]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/21/farewell-alex-my-friend/

Alexander Cockburn, 1941-2012
Farewell, Alex, My Friend
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Our friend and comrade Alexander Cockburn died last night in Germany,
after a fierce two-year long battle against cancer. His daughter Daisy
was at his bedside.

Alex kept his illness a tightly guarded secret. Only a handful of us knew
how terribly sick he truly was. He didn’t want the disease to define him.
He didn’t want his friends and readers to shower him with sympathy. He
didn’t want to blog his own death as Christopher Hitchens had done. Alex
wanted to keep living his life right to the end. He wanted to live on his
terms. And he wanted to continue writing through it all, just as his
brilliant father, the novelist and journalist Claud Cockburn had done.
And so he did. His body was deteriorating, but his prose remained as
sharp, lucid and deadly as ever.

In one of Alex’s last emails to me, he patted himself on the back (and
deservedly so) for having only missed one column through his incredibly
debilitating and painful last few months. Amid the chemo and blood
transfusions and painkillers, Alex turned out not only columns for
CounterPunch and The Nation and First Post, but he also wrote a small
book called Guillotine and finished his memoirs, A Colossal Wreck, both
of which CounterPunch plans to publish over the course of the next year.

Alex lived a huge life and he lived it his way. He hated compromise in
politics and he didn’t tolerate it in his own life. Alex was my pal, my
mentor, my comrade. We joked, gossiped, argued and worked together nearly
every day for the last twenty years. He leaves a huge void in our lives.
But he taught at least two generations how to think, how to look at the
world, how to live a life of resistance. So, the struggle continues and
we’re going to remain engaged. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Not dead, in jail or a slave? Thank a liberal!