Alexander Cockburn was born in Scotland and grew up in Ireland. An Oxford graduate, he was an editor at the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman before becoming a permanent resident of the United States in 1973. Cockburn wrote about the media and politics for the Village Voice, and, through the 1980s, was a regular columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He co-edits Counterpunch.org, and is the author of several books, including Corruptions of Empire (Verso Books, 1987) and, most recently, Al Gore: A User’s Manual (Verso Books, 2000). His exclusive column appears fortnightly on Antiwar.com.