Dobbs: The United Nations is getting a bit burdensome, it seems to me, to anyone whose interested in freedom, whether it be through the World Trade Organization, whether it be though all sorts of institutions, organizations, whether ranging in issue to global warming to anti-blasphemy. This is becoming a totalitarian, authoritarian organization--
Hitchens: Yes, but nothing--
Dobbs: --and political correctness is really an effort to control, seemingly to me at least, nothing more than an effort to control thought.
Hitchens: Nothing to do with it's remit either, which is the settlement of disputes among members states through peaceful means, of course, nothing to do with that at all.
A "totalitarian" organization huh? What fatuous tripe. And facile moral equivalence to boot!
Not surprising to find The Fallen One having a field day with this UN resolution though. The resolution allegedly dedicated to "Combating Defamation of Religion" is indeed odious and should be opposed, but all this hullabaloo is just that, a clear-cut case of a molehill being made into a mountain. This scandal is just a manufactured wedge issue designed to stir up anti-Arab hysteria as well as ultranationalist parochialism through the synergy of combining those who froth at the mouth about Muslims all day long with the tin-foil hatted Black Helicopter crowd whom wring their hands and shout from the rooftops about the coming One-World Government being brought on by the United Nations.
I just hope we don't have to suffer Hitchens prattling on about this for months on end.
A crowd of Beirut natives gather around to give Hitch moral support during his recent ordeal. Several kind people actually voulunteered to look after his jacket, wallet and Rolex.
First, here's a pathetic attempt at a joke made up of 75% Greywolf brain material, just to establish mood.
Why is Christopher Hitchens like a plate of fish and chips with a side order of scrambled eggs?
Because he's been assaulted, battered and beaten.
Now, for the main course, let me draw your attention to an interesting thread at Pharyngula, where a lot of people have been venting their opinions on Hitch following his set-to with the Leabano-Syrian Nazo-Baatho-Nationalist Anti-Zio-Non-Falangio-Fascist and Social Democrats. For those who can't be bothered to click the link, here are a few of my favorite comments.
From Helioprogenus What's to admire for Hitchen's being such a belligerent alcoholic? It's not so much that he has steel cajones, but more a typical alcoholic who spent the night with a mistress called gin. I'm sure he'd be fine with those Islamic extremists who practice Sharia Law spray painting anti-equality slogans on a billboard outside his home pub. He's a visitor to a place, and if he wants to use words in print, or spoken through a valid medium, that's acceptable, but when you deface things on other people's soil, there are repercussions to your actions.
From NickK Sometimes it's OK to blame the victim. A drunk driver wraps his car around a telephone pole and dies. It's OK to blame the victim. An idiot dives into shallow water and breaks his neck. It's OK to blame the victim. A belligerent Anglo Saxon visits a land that has fought civil wars on and off since Jimmy Carter was president, and defaces a poster of one of the combatant parties. I think some responsibility can lie with said Anglo Saxon. Stupidity needs to be called out for what it is.
From Dustin Exactly. Just because he's an atheist doesn't mean we have to defend the guy. He did something extremely stupid (you might say brave) and was lucky the punks who responded didn't kill him for it. His actions weren't for a "higher purpose" or as a political protest (to anyone but himself and his present associates), they were because he's an ass. Really, you don't need to feel obligated to defend him. Just be glad he survived the encounter and chalk it up on the "dumb things done by Christopher Hitchens" list.
From Tom This happened in Lebanon. Is there a person on the planet that doesn't know that there are thugs in Lebanon? One might as well say that by pulling Madonna's panties down, he revealed to the world that she is a woman. [Has anyone ever tried that trick with Ann Coulter's panties?]
From HP In some ways, I feel a certain kindred spirit with Hitch: we're both alcoholics, we're both nicotine addicts, and we're both unrepentant atheists. On the other hand, Hitch is ten times the writer I'll ever be, and ten times the asshole I would ever want to be. Unlike most people, I've been reading Hitchens since his columns were appearing in The Nation, so he wasn't an unknown quantity to me when he became the face of left-wing support for the invasion of Iraq.
But here's the real kicker: Hitchens is a coward. 9/11/01 scared the shit out of him. (And not out of me, thankyouverymuch. So I win that round.) He betrayed everything he ever represented, and he called me (and most of you) a coward and a "fifth columnist" for not supporting a stupid war that was doomed to failure, historically and strategically. Hitchens isn't ignorant; he knows about Alexander and the Assyrians and the Seljuks and the Ottomans and the British. He knows how the people of Mesopotamia have always dealt with foreign invaders, regardless of religion or ideology. Yet he willingly turned himself into a tool of the most irrational, anti-intellectual forces that have appeared in Western culture since the Enlightenment. (If Hitch were born Chinese, he would have been an architect of the Cultural Revolution, another anti-intellectual movement borne of fear.)
I drink rye whiskey; Hitch drinks a heady cocktail of arrogance, pride, and fear. He wasn't just wrong; he was colossally wrong on an epic scale that reduces everything he has said since then to a pallid parody of an otherwise interesting man.
The man has never apologized for his support for the invasion of Iraq to a degree commensurate with the damage he has done to the country I call home. He's a blowhard; he is foolhardy enough to get himself beat up for being insufferable, but lacks the courage of his convictions to tell the truth when the truth really matters. Hitchens knew that the invasion would be an unmitigated disaster. He knew it would fail. And he supported it anyway because he is, deep down, a chickenshit.
I'm a drunk -- I'm drunk right now, if you can't tell -- but Hitchen's "courage" is false courage. It's easy to get beat up for being an ass. But supporting the invasion of Iraq was an act of sheer cowardice. Christopher Hitchens is a dick.
From Joe Max Meh. It was a street-stupid thing to do.
I abhor the living hell that the street gangs of Oakland and East LA have created in their communities, but I'm not going down to the Flatlands or Compton after dark and start defacing Crips graffiti right in front of their faces. I'm just sayin'...
And lastly, just for a pretence of balance, from blueelm Poor Hitch, but I'll toast to him tonight (Scotch here too). Do you some of you guys honestly believe that people "deserve" violence? What he did was provocative, but people shouldn't have to be afraid. Some times I think the man is a belligerent ass, but I'm always glad he's there.
Ever wondered what it would be like for Chris Hitchens to go head to head with Dinesh D'Souza over the God question? Wow, what a sight that would be, eh?
Well, at last, we finally get to see it happen, in this rare, once-in-a-lifetime debate between these two intellectual heavyweights. Better enjoy this folks, because we're not going to see another showdown like this for a long, long time. It could even be entire weeks before they ever go at it like this again.
"Hitchens clearly hates God." So says James White, a Christian preacher we've featured before on a Sunday evening at Hitchens Watch. James has been stirred up by Hitch's misrepresentation of Christianity and he's been singularly unimpressed by some of the Christians who have gone one-to-one with the Antichrister in the recent string of debates.
While I personally am happy to accept the precepts of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, a 4.6 billion year-old earth and the development of human biological and cultural evolution over hundreds of thousands of years, and I find the idea of the Christian God implausible to say the least, I also find the Hitchensian materialistic cosmos un-filipping-believable. But leaving incredulity to one side, I admire White's tenacity in going for the red meat in his condemnation of Hitch's rebellion, and I love the attempt at analyzing motive and psychology. According to White, what Hitch really hates is that he knows he is a creature of God and that God has a right to do with Hitch whatever he wants. White also says that the only difference between people like White and people like Hitch is a five-letter word called "grace", which is an amazing statement when you come to think of it. This is much more stimulating than anything De Souza has managed to turn out.
Incidentally, for those of you who are mesmerized by the popinjay's amazing grasp of science and history, can you spot the error in the outline of Chinese civilization at the time of Christ that he gives in the early part of this video?
You can have a great intellect, but a great intellect in a blackened room will still run into the wall. There must be guidance. There must be light. But when a person suppresses the knowledge of God, they walk in darkness. Their intellect will be guided to error because of their own self-interest in maintaining their rebellion against God. So don't get the idea that the Bible says that the person who suppresses the knowledge of God cannot have an incredibly high IQ or speak very well like Christopher Hitchens can. But the reality is that there is another element to human predication. It's not just one's IQ. There's many an old lady that has much more wisdom than many a scholar. It is the combination of these two things that is most important.
"Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures." In other words, man engages in idolatry. When you don't worship the one true God, you begin to worship the creation around us; you being to attribute to the creation things that should only be attributed to the one true God. That is the very nature of idolatry. It can be very religious, or it can be like Christopher Hitchens's idolatry. Never ever forget Christopher Hitchens is a very religious man. He's on a crusade. He's on a quest. He is serving his God. He has his ultimate authorities. He may be his ultimate authority—his lusts, his desires, his agenda. But he has his ultimate authority. He is a religious man. He has priorities that order his life. Don't ever forget that.
Stuck indifferently in the back of some online news round-ups was the story last week that The Washington Cops seem to be on the verge of solving the murder of Chandra Levy. Like a lot of random killings, it was a tough nut to crack, and has spent years as the world's most publicized cold case. Well, first publicized, then forgotten.
How few revisit the painful memory of the Washington Media Establishment's revolting performance in the summer of 2001? There would not be even a cursory self review in the press, they switched into patriotic mode and began their prize-winning stories about how the Towers fell in the new era of journalistic responsibility.
A few had taken notice of the Press's dubious Gary Condit fever. The occasionally astute Richard Cohen of the Washington Post called the coverage "pornographic." This may be the one example on record of the libeling of Ron Jeramy, as we were nightly treated to the then inescapable Ann Coulter explaining how the press was doing a "yeoman's job" of covering the "scandal." Eager to distract attention from the heavy lifting they had done in installing the then unpopular President, the Press went crazy for a new scandal of Democratic Sex. Some right wing commentators put it rather baldly, this was just a continuation of their plan to clean up Washington that started with their party-line impeachment.
Though details aren't public, Condit was able to quietly win some no doubt substantial settlements from news organizations that had implicated him in the murder. In advertising and revenue they may still consider themselves on the winning end. After 9-11, of course, it was shoved not onto the back burner but right off the stove; and the villain-making business of Gary Condit became they equally idiotic hero-making business of George W Bush.
Leading the way, up and down the line, was the already long since "changed" shlock journalist Christopher Hitchens, whose last two Nation Pieces before 9-11 were on the Levy case. Tying it all to his previous stellar journalism, he coined the hilarious phrase "Clindit", which sounded kind of like Clitoris, you see...this from the man who once said the Marx Brothers weren't funny.
By the time Americans gave there tacit, we-don't-really-have-a-choice approval to the invasion of Iraq they had been softened up by years of shlock journalism. Hitchens main complaint was with the Washington Police, who refused to arrest an innocent man for the murder of Chandra Levy on the cowardly technicality that there was no evidence. Indeed, the Washington Police Chief was eventually hounded into publicly criticizing Condit for not giving them more information — information it is now obvious was never his to give.
Hitchens's literary pretension gives these guttersnipes an air of respectability when he drags them on for another chat session. If we are all of us in the gutter, these are the ones with eyes fixed on the sewer.
––––––––––––––––––
Hitch on Condit: 'Clindit', The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 7, 2001 Modesto Man, The Nation, Sept. 6, 2001
The things you are allowed to advertise on the sides of British buses these days are blasphemous. It's all the result of a campaign by that crypto-Satanic punk rock band Richard Dawkins and the British Humanist Association, who raised the dosh to plaster 200 London bendy buses with the message: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Well, to be fair, the Christers started this ad war with messages of their own promising non-believing commuters eternal damnation, and the atheist response of declaring there is "probably no God" is meek and mild by comparison — unless, of course, the fire, brimstone and frilly frocks brigade really do have a hotline to the Almighty.
However, due to a rush of complaints, the Advertising Standards Authority are investigating whether or not the ads are offensive or break guidelines on taste and decency. After all, says Christian campaigner Stephen Green, "If you're going to put out what appears to be a factual statement then you have to be able to back it up. They've got to substantiate this proposition that in all probability, God doesn't exist." Which is where Hitch may come in handy. He has, after all, made something of a career out of arguing against the probability that a deity dictates our ultimate destiny, and he's even had a stint as an advocatus diaboli.
At the end of the day, belief in the existence or not of God comes down to one thing: it's a matter of faith. It is unlikely to be settled by reference to definitions of "existence", ASA guidelines, probability calculations, or even the application of DeMorgan's Theorem. Hitch has been firebombing religious faith in the most scathing, mocking and dismissive terms, but ironically, his bunker-busting efforts have achieved far less collateral damage than Dave Allen managed to inflict with his casually-tossed satirical fire crackers. Moreover, to my knowledge Hitch hasn't discussed faith in the larger sense of "belief in a proposition that is not supported by a perceived majority of evidence," which covers those of us who continue, despite growing rumours that a black whole is consuming the world economy, to pay into our life insurance and pension schemes, and those stalwart few who are convinced that Charlton Athletic are the greatest football team in England, if not the world. Does the Hitch really think those who lack his massive store of self-esteem can survive and prosper without any kind of faith at all?
The answer to those who say we need to ditch faith in order to improve, evolve or mature as a species or as individuals, would do well to listen to the wise words of the Bard of Brooklyn, who preached that you need a busload of the stuff to get by.
Lastly, here's today's quiz question. And it's a real brain teaser. What was the slogan printed on the side of the red double-decker bus that was blown up in Tavistock Square on 7 July, 2005?
It is greatly to be hoped that Hitch has not suffered any major damage as a result of his set-to with the SSNP supporters in Beirut. Who would have thought it, fisticuffs at his age? We may never know what actually happened to this English hooligan abroad—indeed, we can already see the story morphing into a full-blown myth—and as time goes by we can expect the movie version to go something like this.
At the dead of night in a dark alley in the kasbah, a dozen Syrian skinhead Social Nationalist National Socialist thugs ambush the Hitch with the aim of stealing his wallet and his mobile phone. But the sprightly old boy is much fitter than they bargained for, having recently been totally rebuilt as Vanity Fair's very own Six Million Dollar Man.
After taking on th entire bunch with his bear hands and leaving ten of the men sprawled across the pavement—their blood on his hands and forehead—the Hitch picks up his pith hat to find himself on the wrong end of the barrel of a Kalashnikov. Prepared for the worst, he stares cooly into the crazed hate-filled eyes of the meanest Arab, sorry! Muslim, no, please pardon me! Islamofacist SOB you ever did see. With a hyena-like laugh, the sinister levantine squeezes the trigger and empties the entire magazine into the Hitch's chest. But amazingly, each bullet disappears with a dull thud leaving the man still standing upright!
Unable to believe his eyes, the Oriental fiend drops the gun and stands frozen with mouth agape, revealing a hideous mess of gold and black teeth and Syrian dental work. At this point, the Hitch reaches inside his trusty white jacket and pulls out a dog-eared yellow volume bearing about 50 bullet holes and the words "god is not Great". Miraculously, the athiest tome has done what no Bible or Koran ever could. It has shielded its author from a hail of bullets that would otherwise have meant certain death.
Witnessing the miracle, the entire group of Syrians bow before the Hitch and pledge to become his faithful followers. They later convert the entire Middle East to atheism and end all restrictions on bar opening hours—but that's another story. Meanwhile, the Hitch emerges from the episode shaken but not stirred.
It's hard to believe even any normal stupid-ass foreigner would protest a political party by defacing one of their posters on a wall. But that's exactly what Hitchens did, in an attempt to impress his neocon buddies. And the best part is that somebody attacked him as a result! It's a wonder they didn't cripple him. Fortunately, our Hitch got away, fleeing like the pseudo-macho man that he is. Ames writes:
So rather than getting stomped while fighting bravely against a gang of Syrian fascists, we have Hitchens plus two sidekicks deliberately provoking Syrian thugs in a foreign city…and then fleeing like bitches when one lone Syrian nerd came after them... when one lone Syrian nerd came after them. And even with their three crusading Western selves versus one lone Syrian nerd, Hitchens STILL got thrashed.
What else can I say other than Hitchens is a fraud who still - apparentely - has the capability to manipulate and lie people into his beliefs? More from Ames:
Even the one impressive detail first reported about the fight via Hitchens’ supporters–that he got stomped in the middle of the night, in a dark empty Beirut backalley, after getting famously drunk in a bar, fighting alone against a gang of Syran fascists–was an inversion of the truth, a very sad slapstick truth. In reality, Hitchens was stomped in broad daylight in a “posh shopping district” by a lone Syrian twerp fighting against Hitchens and two friends after they set him off. As the aforementioned neocon blogger (who thinks he’s doing a favor for his buddy Hitchens) notes:
It didn’t happen in a bar. It happened mid-day on the street. It wasn’t a drunken brawl. I have no idea if Hitchens had drank at all, but if he had, it was like his typical lunch-time bloody mary. (I’m not saying he didn’t get drunk– just not then.)
Thufferin’ thuckutash. Hitchens’ buddies tried to warn him before the stomping that if he defaced a Syrian fascist poster, it would cause problems for everyone . Naturally, Hitchens didn’t listen and instead took a tough moral stand…before fleeing like a bitch and getting his ass kicked, even though with two backups he should have stomped the Syrian. Sorta stands as a metaphor for Hitchens’ behavior during the Bush years.
It reminds me of the episode when Sylvester gets stomped by the kangaroo. Sylvester picks the fight deliberately because he’s sure he can kick the kangaroo’s ass and therefore impress his son, since to Sylvester, the kangaroo is nothing but a mouse. Sylvester’s son tries to tell him that the kangaroo is much more serious than a mouse, but Sylvester patronizingly tells his son not to be afraid, they’re just little mice, because Sylvester sees this as a cheap opportunity to make himself look tough: “Son, you take care of all the little mice, and I’ll handle any BIG mice that come along.” Once again, Chritthhhhhhtopher Hitchenttthhh-thhhh, you showed that big mouse who’s boss.
a member of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) presented the "anti-theist" and ardently anti-Baathist speaker with a memento.
The gift was simple - a poster with a picture of Hitchens in what appeared to be a position of supplication. "Hitchens, supporter of US Terrorism" the poster read. At the top there was a handwritten note: "You are a Fascist."
The following article was originally published in Forward magazine in January 2001. It is no longer accessable from the Forward website, but I've managed to dig up a copy (the accuracy of which I can't confirm) from a message thread at the Baltimore Mariland online community club here. It is in large part a review of Barbara Kessel's excellent study of people who, like Hitch, first found out that they were Jews in adulthood, Suddenly Jewish: Jews Raised as Gentiles Discover Their Jewish Roots, but more than this it contains some of Hitch's personal thoughts on coming to terms with being a "semi-semite" and what this implies.
The Part-Jewish Question: Double the Pleasure or Twice the Pain? Of 'Semi-Semites' and Those Who Fear Them
According to the laws of Moses, the Law of Return, Israel's civil code and the Nuremburg Laws, I am a Jew. This definition, however, is both too exhaustive and not exhaustive enough. I have many friends who, unlike me, were raised in Jewish homes, but who only derive the Mosaic from the paternal side; this would exclude them from the tribe of Moses according to Israel's civil code (absent the conversion of the mother) but would not exempt them from the vengeance of the Nuremburg code. I'm fairly globalized: My father was Anglo-Celtic; my first wife is Greek; my second wife's family came from Odessa or thereabouts, and I have a godchild in Zimbabwe. In practical terms, you are reading a guide for the perplexed, written by an anti-Zionist atheist of whose progeny one is wholly Jewish while two are Anglo-Cypriot. I had no say in the making of these rules and know of no rational way to observe them.
Recent advances in DNA testing have either simplified or complicated the claims of holy books and founding texts. A riveting recent essay in Commentary described the results of a match-up between the genetic database of the Kohanim - those whose Jewish ancestry is supposedly the strongest and best-attested - and that of a "lost tribe" in Namibia that has long claimed Jewish descent. The fit was amazingly close. So it is with other groups in the Asian diaspora, many of whose folk stories had been thought to be merely legendary. It also turns out that there is a close DNA affinity between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs; a finding that, if it does not confirm Freud's weird speculations in "Moses and Monotheism," at least reinforces his theory of the narcissism of the small difference. How long before we can codify Khazar DNA and find out if Koestler was right or if the Ashkenazim have any genetic claim to Gaza? (The learned author of the Commentary article, eventually concluded that enough was enough already, and that better uses could be found for the research money than the infinite theoretical expansion of the prolific seed of Abraham.)
My maternal grandmother was the same way. Born of a Blumenthal-Levin union that originated in a departure from Breslau (now Wroclaw) to Liverpool in the late 19th century, she wanted her first grandson to be an assimilated English gentleman. (You may judge for yourself how well this aspiration succeeded). But she didn't want the story to end with her, either, and when my mother had died and my brother had chosen a Jewish bride and my father was dying, she came right out with it. "I was so happy," said this old lady of no great education or, I regret to say, intuitive intelligence, "so happy to see you boys both had the Jewish brains." And now I have a pile of old German- and Polish-Jewish birth and marriage certificates in a drawer (plus my own marriage certificate from the great Rabbi Bob Goldburg, who had also officiated at Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe's wedding) and, if I'm traveling in some near-"Judenrein" spot such as Istanbul or Asmara or Sarajevo or Salonika or Damascus, I do what I never normally do and pay a visit to the temple.
What am I looking for? That is the question which both these books attempt to answer. "The Half-Jewish Book" is in one way relentlessly joking and upbeat and show-business-minded - the perfect Chanukah stocking-stuffer. Maybe you knew, but I thought "Who Knew?" as the parade of semi-Semitic celebrities went by.
Gwyneth Paltrow? (I know one should always mentally replace the "w" with the "v" in this culture, but still.) Winona LaDuke? (She "went with" her Native American paternal side.) Between all the lines, however, is a serious argument that partial or quasi-Jewishness is both inevitable and beneficial, and that those who fret about dilution or "marrying out" are either too pessimistic or too tribal, or both. Interest declared: The authors cite with approbation my essay "On Not Knowing the Half of It," adding that my book title "Prepared for the Worst" is "distinctly Jewish-sounding," a compliment I think it would be churlish to decline.
Here's what we would all like to know about the Lemba - which is the name of that lost tribe in Namibia - but are slightly reluctant to ask. Did members of the Lemba minority furnish the majority of Southwest Africa's political revolutionaries, freelance intellectuals, doctors, comedians, union-organizers and lawyers? (Also, how did they fare when the region was under the control of German colonialists and ethnologists?) Or did the Lemba keep within their ghetto walls, muttering about the Second Temple and the tendency of their mutinous young people to marry Ovambo or Herero shvartzes? I ask a serious question in a flippant way; the Jews of Europe did not really come into their own until the French Revolution began to emancipate them both from Christian persecution and from their own theocracy. The fate of the Jewish genius was often that of Spinoza, whose name we are lucky to know given the attempt by his "own" people to silence him.
This difference of emphasis can be seen in Barbara Kessel's book, which is really a series of first-person narratives and discoveries, strongly inflected by the Shoah and tending to the idea of a recovered identity. This is a necessary task in one way; many among the Nazi-created Diaspora were of the especially hated "mixed race" variety; many were too fearful to mention their origins ever again; many were raised as "gentiles" by the non-Jews who "saved" them. But is it a vital task?
Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, speaks in these pages of the Jewish "souls" lost in Poland by the erasure, not just of people, but of family history and awareness. For these, and for their heirs, there should obviously be an ingathering. And it will be endlessly fascinating; I was able to tell Michael Dobbs of The Washington Post that the Czech embassy had informed Madeleine Albright of the true situation of her family several months before the date she gave as the date of her "discovery": In other words, I know for a certainty that she was lying, but I still have no idea why. From Ms. Kessel I learned that there is a Society for Crypto-Judaic studies, tracing the arcane world of the Sephardic converso, and realized that it would be more extraordinary if there were not such a body. Ms. Kessel's own view, which she puts in the mouth of one interviewee, is that America needs a more exact and principled idea of "identity," not a vague and mushy denial of the particularism with which it is only human to be preoccupied.
But this principle would have to be just as true for Latvians and Iroquois, and one has to ask whether Jews who think it kosher to "think with the blood" are happy when other groups do the same. The fact, of course, is that they (we) are not easy with this thought. But then the fact also is that Jews are matrilineal for a reason; they know that ethnic purity is a fantasy, and they must also suspect that inbreeding can be unwholesome. (One English friend of mine only discovered his "roots" when his firstborn had Tay-Sachs disease.) So this is what I'm vaguely seeking when I visit the far-flung "shul" or obscure half-obliterated Jewish quarter: the leaven in the dough. Societies that have expelled or ostracized the Jews have historically been condemned to all the consequences of their own stupidity and cruelty. But one element in the litany of accusations against Jews - that they are rootless cosmopolitans - deserves not to be repudiated. The worst anti-Semites did not so much hate the observant and docile shtetl types; they didn't really even hate the moneychangers they couldn't do without: They hated and feared the skeptical, scientific, artistic, secular, intellectual and discontented Jews whose names we all know. Of this virus, even if one can doubt that it's really in the genes, one could be proud to be a carrier. And a half-bottle of the right stuff, carefully deployed, can be as potent as a Magnum.
Fellow Hitcheans, I have been a little out of the watching loop so I am asking if anyone has a comment on this?
Hitchens Beaten by the SSNP? Can anyone in Beirut verify this? "I dont know if you find this as news worthy or not, but Christopher Hitchens is currently in Beirut sponsored by the same group that owns that crap NOW Lebanon. He got in a few nights ago and surprisingly went out drinking. On his way out of the bar he saw an SSNP poster and wrote on it "Fuck the SSNP". There just happened to be some SSNP thugs near by--most likely asking people for their ID, and most likely to no avail--and saw him write on the poster and kicked his ass. He is still walking with a limp."Update: This story has now been confirmed. Look, it's widely known that since the May 2008 events the SSNP guys have behaved like thugs in Hamra (where the ass-kicking took place). But seriously, would you roll into East L.A. and start writing over gang signs? I mean, is that smart? C'mon, Brother Hitchens, we're rootin' for you, but have a little walkin' around sense. He was probably at De Prague. Where the wait staff is, like, 90% SSNP. Abu Muqawama's Top Three West Beirut Watering Holes: 1. Barometre (cheap arak, great fattoush); 2. Captain's Cabin; 3. Danny's. (In response to a reader, the great Chez Andre closed sometime a little over a year ago. That hole-in-the-wall was great.)
It's been picked up by a number of different sites, seems like a fairly unfortunate drinking type incident and I hope there were no serious injuries.
....But later that night, three of our "scoop" brigade--Jonathan Foreman, Michael Totten and Christopher Hitchens--got involved in a street brawl with some thugs of a Syria-loving skinhead party called the SNPN after Hitchens rather gallantly insulted their swastika flag. On our way to a meeting with Minister of State Nassib Lahoud, Hitchens showed me the gashed knuckles and bruises suffered during the punch up. The attackers had apparently come out of nowhere on posh Hamra Street, where they had gone to buy shoes. "I was on the ground," Hitchens said, "and getting it in the head." It was a miracle they didn't pull Kalashnikovs.
So sometimes our boy is on the side of the angels.
The Hitch-monster, during a recent stop on The Book Tour That Knows No End, er, I mean his principled and noble mission to spread secularism and enlightenment, regaled a captive crowd with his excuse for canceling on them in October:
“I’m happy to be here,” Hitchens said. “I was supposed to be here in October, but I went to Cuba to interview dictator Fidel Castro.”
Wow, what an important person he is, rubbing shoulders with the powerful and all. So Hitch, how did that interview go?
We landed in Havana around noon and were met on the tarmac by Omar Gonzalez Jimenez, president of the Cuban Film Institute, and Luis Alberto Notario, head of the institute's international co-production wing. I'd spent time with both of them on my earlier trip to Cuba. We started catching up on personal matters on the walk to the customs office, until Hitch stepped forward and unabashedly demanded of Omar, "Sir, we must see the president!" "Yes," Omar said. "We are aware of the request, and word has been passed to the president. We are still awaiting his response."...By noon of the following day, the clock was ticking loudly in our ears. We had sixteen hours left in Havana before we would have to head to the airport to catch our flights back home...
The clock was no longer ticking. It was pounding. Omar told me we would be hearing the decision of the president quite soon. Fingers crossed, Douglas, Hitch, Fernando and I went back to the protocol house to get our bags packed in advance. By 6 pm, we were on a ten-hour countdown. I was sitting downstairs in the living room, reading in the hazy late-afternoon light. Hitch and Douglas were in their upstairs quarters, I assumed napping to offset anxiety. And on the couch beside me was Fernando, snoring away.
Then Luis appeared at our open front door. I glanced over the top of my glasses as he gave me a very direct nod. Without words, I pointed questioningly up the stairs to where my companions lay. But Luis shook his head apologetically. "Only you," he said. The president had made his decision.
When I got back to the protocol house, it was nearly 2 am. My old friend Fernando, looking much the worse for wear, had waited up. My companions had had quite a night. Poor Fernando had taken the brunt of their frustration. They hadn't known where I'd gone, nor why I had left them behind. And the remaining Cuban officials they'd been able to contact had insisted they stay put, should either of the Castro brothers spontaneously offer an audience. So they had also missed out on a last Cuban night on the town. After filling me in, Fernando went to get a couple hours' sleep. I stayed up reviewing my notes and was first at the breakfast table, at 4:45 am. When Douglas and Hitch ambled down the stairs, I put the edge of the tablecloth over my head in mock shame. I guess, under the circumstances, it was a bit early (in more than just the hour) to be testing their humor. The joke didn't play. While Fernando took a separate flight to Buenos Aires, we had a quiet breakfast and a quiet flight back to home sweet home.
When we arrived in Houston, I realized I'd underestimated the thick skin of these two road-worn professionals. Whatever ice I'd perceived earlier had melted. We said our goodbyes, celebrating what had been a thrilling several days. Neither had been so catty as to inquire into the content of my interview, but Christopher headed to his eastbound connection with a parting word, "Well...I guess we'll read about it."
But the trip wasn't a total bust though. Hitchens et al. stopped by Venezuela on the way to Cuba, and spent some considerable time with Chavez:
Hitchens sits quietly, taking notes throughout the conversation. Chávez recognizes a flicker of skepticism in his eye. "CREES-to-fer, ask me a question. Ask me the hardest question." They share a smile. Hitchens asks, "What's the difference between you and Fidel?" Chávez says, "Fidel is a communist. I am not. I am a social democrat. Fidel is a Marxist-Leninist. I am not. Fidel is an atheist. I am not. One day we discussed God and Christ. I told Castro, I am a Christian. I believe in the Social Gospels of Christ. He doesn't. Just doesn't. More than once, Castro told me that Venezuela is not Cuba, and we are not in the 1960s.
That's his hardest question? Surely, it's plain as a pikestaff that notwithstanding Castro's major influence on Chavez there are no doubt colossal differences between the autocratic Marxist-Leninist "revolution" in Cuba and the radical social democratic Bolivarian movement in Venezuela. I guess Chavez caught Chris off guard or something.
All and all though, it sounds like The Contrarian was a little off-put by his failed trip, to say the least. It sounds like he wasted his time in Cuba and came out looking like a bloody fool for it.
As Israel launches its covert war of assassination and sabotage against Iran — such a shame, as they could have been great friends — Hitch reminds us that we must not let the mullahs run out the clock on this one. If we're going to use sporting clichés, I suppose we'd better ask what sort of strategy and tactics our side should be using in order to prevent the game going to the other team. And Hitch, as so often in his Slate polemics, is less than helpful. Using a soccer analogy for convenience, he thinks the captain of our team should should shout directly at the members of the opposition and try to entice them into kick the ball over to our centre forward to give us a decent chance of putting it in the back of their net in return for a free pair of Nike boots and a signed photo of David Beckham all round. Clearly, he'd be absolutely useless on a real football pitch at anything apart from running over with a wet spunge to help players who go down with muscle cramps or a kick in the shin.
The idea of direct and transparent negotiations with the Iranians is not wrong in principle, but it depends on which Iranians are the actual or potential partners. The president can address the Iranian people directly if he chooses, from the podium of the United Nations (as I urged Bush to do). He can tell them that just as the United States can and will help them to build civilian nuclear reactors, so it will not stand still and watch all Iran's agreements with international bodies be flagrantly broken. He can tell them that the mullahs' sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas is a reason for Iran's continued isolation. He can add—as I've suggested before—that in its zeal for armaments, the theocracy has been culpably negligent in preparing Iran and its people for the likelihood of a serious earthquake in the next few years and that the United States stands ready to share its seismological expertise in the here and now.
Hitch should bear in mind that, to paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, "we" go into negotiations with the partners we have, not the partners we wish we had, that President Obama doesn't speak Persian, and the the United States relies these days on Japan to construct its civilian nuclear reactors, as it no longer possesses the domestic technological capability to build its own. As for America not standing still while the centrifuges spin, any such threat would be interpreted as a bluff by the mullahs, who would merely make use of it as evidence that the Great Satan was attempting to bribe and blackmail the people of Iran yet again.
Hitch is at pains to inform us that the Iranians are pressing hard to make an atomic bomb and that they may be ready to make an announcement that they've succeeded before the end of this year. He further declares that if this scenario plays out, "It would mean being laughed at by the mullahs in the here and now." Actually, Iranian mullahs seldom laugh at the best of times, and never ever at anything as serious as the Great Satan. And even if they did laugh at Europe for failing to stop an Iranian bomb, it wouldn't be in the here and now but in the there and then, which is a different time and place entirely. Moreover, don't tell Martin Amis, but Hitch's use of "in the here and now" in conjunction with two separate points in the same short column smacks of lazy journalism and wreaks of a slide into cliché.
One last thing, in the course of expressing his concern about the consequences of Iran getting the bomb, he makes the following error.
For decades, we have wondered what might happen when or if an apocalyptic weapon came into the hands of a messianic group or irrational regime. We are surely now quite close to finding out.
Followers of Hitch will be well aware that he regards the North Korean regime as both messianic and irrational. It is officially acknowledged that this regime is already in possession of nuclear weapons. Likewise, many people, some of them fairly sane and savvy, regard the Israeli regime as messianic and irrational, and this regime too has had a stock of nuclear weapons for many years. Accordingly, many people who take an interest in such things have long since ceased wondering what if or what when and instead taken to musing about what next.
"We never go to war. This is not because we fear death... Our God, who has commanded us to love our enemies and to suffer without complaining, would not permit us to cross the seas to slaughter our brothers, just because murderers clothed in scarlet, wearing caps two feet high, enlist citizens by making a noise with two little sticks beating on a stretched ass's skin." — Andrew Pitt, explaining the Quakers' attitude to war, as recorded by Voltaire
Christopher Hitchens isn't just an atheist; he's an antitheist. He's glad, rather than sad, that there's not God watching over us. In his best-selling book God is Not Great, he characterizes religion as "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." In the same book, Hitchens accuses religion of educating children to hate nonbelievers and he says we damage our children by indoctrinating them.
In a section entitled Is Religion Child Abuse? (p.217), Hitch, who loves to anthropomorphize just as much as the next Bible basher, writes passionately on how religion, to which he attributes a number of human attributes, harms children who are exposed to it.
When we consider whether religion has "done more harm than good"—not that this would say anything at all about its truth or authenticity—we are faced with an imponderably large question. How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith? This is almost as hard to determine as the number of spiritual and religious dreams and visions that came "true," which in order to possess even a minimal claim to value would have to be measured against all the unrecorded and unremembered ones that did not. But we can be sure that religion has always hoped to practice upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young, and has gone to great lengths to make sure of this privilege by making alliances with secular powers in the material world.
With such strong views as these on record, one might reasonably expect that Hitch would at the very least have taken precautions to protect his own children from the evils of faith-based teaching. But if one thought this one would be wrong. Because as it happens, Hitch's daughter attends a religious school in Washington DC, as he confessed in June 2007 in the following interview with the BBC's Simon Mayo.
The school in question is Sidwell Friends School, a Quaker private school that has long enjoyed an excellent reputation and boasts (if Quakers are allowed to do that) an impressive list of former alumni that includes the redoubtable Gore Vidal and the children of several US presidents. On the School Philosophy page of the website, it states:
Sidwell Friends School is an educational community inspired by the values of the Religious Society of Friends and guided by the Quaker belief in "That of God" in each person.
While on the Quaker Values page we find the proclamation:
The Quaker belief that there is "that of God" in each of us shapes everything we do at Sidwell Friends School.
Now, Quakers are far from being exclusivists and their schools, including Sidwell, as open to all. Moreover, Quakers are not famous for forcing their religious ideas on other people or for immersing children in the study of rigid doctrines, and so there is no particular reason why a non-Quaker, or a non-Christian, or an agnostic, or even an atheist, should object to their children attending a school like Sidwell. However, for a self-declared antitheist who contends categorically that "religion poisons everything" and "religion has always hoped to practice upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young" to entrust the education of his daughter to a religious school appears, on the face of it, to be a self-rebuttal of his entire thesis on the intrinsic harmfulness of religion.
This issue was discussed at The Richard Dawkins Supreme Truth Online Temple last September, where a couple of the commenters were suggesting that there was a fair bit of daylight between Hitch's statements and his actions. One member named The Atheist, who seems to have since been banned, doubtless for taking the name of the Lord Dawkins in vain, wrote:
the main point is that Hitchens is on record as saying:
"I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful."
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with sending his kid to a religious school, but it is unquestionably hypocritical.
Another member, arwellroberts, added that:
It's little wonder that your country is so firmly in the grip of the deluded when this is the best that an elitist "top 5% income earner" atheist can do.
The Atheist also pointed out that there are plenty of good public schools in DC, many of which are rated 10/10 by parents who actually send their kids there. I would add that even if the public schools were inferior, the fact that Hitch believes a Quaker school is the best place to send his daughter shows that he cannot possibly believe what he has written in GING and preached from podiums across the US. As he is apparently happy to have his daughter exposed to this particular form of religious poison, he can't be seriously concerned about the dangers. And on top of this, it cannot be overlooked that the selection of Sidwell is an endorsement of the virtues of this particular form of religious education.
Incidentally, Hitch recently spent some time in the company of Peterson Toscano, a self-described quirky queer Quaker, at the Connecticut Forum. According to Peterson:
Turns out Hitchens’ daughter attends Sidwell Friends School in DC, a Quaker institution where they have silent worship most mornings. I asked him why he would choose a religious school for his daughter, to which he replied, “Well it is a good school.” When I asked about the worship, he stated, “Ah, but they just sit in silence,” which I think we can take as a passive endorsement of Quakerism from this outspoken non-believer.
When discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Chris argues that the problem is insoluble because "the Parties of God won't allow it," despite the fact that Hamas has now repeatedly called for a two-state solution on the '67 borders, which he no doubt knows. Though there is some truth to what Hitchens is saying here. The explicitly Christianist Republican Party decisively blocked any kind of real settlement, as the US always has, before their ignominious collapse last November. And Hitchens gleefully supported them, America's Party of God, on this issue of critical importance in the Middle East, allegedly because Bush once used some meaningless rhetoric about a Palestinian state as he simultaneously signed blank checks for Israel to go wild in the Occupied Territories, mass murder Palestinians, and rapidly expand the settlements in the West Bank.
On Iraq, we get the same old fatuous and tired talking points that have entirely failed to rationalize this great crime and act of aggression. In Hitchens' contorted mind, supporting a policy that led to the death of well over a million Iraqis, chaos, destruction, and millions of refugees, is somehow "showing solidarity" with Iraqis. Sinister piffle indeed.
As the interviewer kept pointing out: in supporting Bush and going into Iraq it has placed Hitchens very squarely on the Right of the spectrum. How can he deny this when he plays coy and openly says he's not a "conservative of any kind, except possibly a Neoconservative," Neoconservativism incontrovertibly being a phenomenon of the Right?
— Special Guest Post by P. Rat, who is now, due to this post, an outright accomplice of the very blog that he's cast so many unfounded and unconscionable aspersions upon. The Rodent launches into a scathing, yet pithy, indictment of the Hitch-Monster:
I don't agree with his sentiments on b+w foetus shots. But, then, I don't like children, much the pity. Nor do I agree with his views on the English and heatwaves, but these are hardly interesting matters.
Au contraire Rattus, to the seasoned Hitchhunter all avenues of attack are a source of untold wonder and fascination, but thanks for this damning critique of The Contrarian.
No folks, that's not a typo. According to an investigation by the Associated Press, "This year, the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations — almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department."
The breakdown shows more than $2 billion in staff costs and $1.6 billion goes into recruiting the men and women who guard America as she sleeps. About $500 million goes on "psychological operations, which targets foreign audiences." And, finally, "$547 million goes into public affairs, which reaches American audiences."
This all ads up to a store of gold beyond the dreams of Falstaffian avarice, and the effort also produces a commensurate amount of blood and gore.
Lamentably, all these resources are not making life a bed of roses for US army recruiters, one of whom, Stephen B. Thornton of Hot Springs, Arkansas, has recently quit and gone public about what he describes as "a nightmare of a job" and his wife calls "a form of torture."
"I would rather spend three years straight in Iraq, without coming home, without a break, than ever be a recruiter again,” said Stewart.
Another recruiter, who almost committed suicide last year, said, "Eventually the system takes down whoever's in it. You either become part of it, or you go mad. I guess I did both."
One of the best antidotes to suicidal depression is to sing out loud and strong in the pub on a Saturday evening. And with that thought in mind, I hereby present the perfect army recruiting ballad, which, depending on who you listen to, traces its roots to olde England and/or even older Bulgaria. The idea is to slip a mickey into the kids' ale as they are crooning this out, and by the time they wake up they are three sheets to the wind and bound for the Cape of Good Hope, Aden and points east.
Altogether lads and lassies!
On rides a captain and three hundred soldier lads Out of the morning mist and through the silent snow Whistling gaily rides the captain at their head Behind him soldier boys sadly weeping go
Oh when you took my gold and swore to follow me, You sold away your lives and your liberty. No more you'll till the soil, no more you'll work the land. No more to the dance you'll go and take girls by the hand.
Oh mothers weep for your son He is gone to kill and die
You'll weep you'll die by the keen edge of the sword, All alone by the muddy Danube shore. He gave the order for the drummers to beat their drums That mothers all might know the life a soldier lives.
Unfurl your ragged banners, and raise your pale young face. You'll all go in the fire, there'll be no hiding place. Oh mother hear the drum beat in the village square. Oh mother the drum's for me to go for a soldier there.
Mothers, Sisters, wives - weep for us Marked as Cain, we die alone.
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Le grand intellectuel pense que Dieu n'est pas grand
With the recent publication of l'édition française of his magnum opus, our antideist extraordiaire popped over to the Paris studios of French TV channel France 24 for a chat in English about his theory of religion. According to Hitch, it has something to do with "the religious part of our brains" being "part of the less highly evolved bit" and us being "half a chromosome away from being chimpanzees." This is an interesting way of specifying the inter-species distance as most of us humans are a whole chromosome away from being diagnosed with Down's Syndrome.
He also speaks about his daughter going to a Quaker school along with the offspring of President Obama and Vice President Biden. "Obviously I don't say that being a Quaker is the same as being a member of Moqtada al-Sadr's malitia. But they do have one thing in common. They're willing to take things on faith. They're willing to prefer faith to reason. And I think that surrender is a very bad one, always."
Personally, I see faith (not necessarily faith in the tenets of any organized religion, but as belief not backed up by strong evidence) and reason (as opposed to rationalization) as thoroughly complimentary. I'd be intellectually and emotionally crippled without both. And let's not forget hope, trust, charity and compassion either. As President Obama said, "I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to being about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours." In our cynical age that may be a tall order, but the alternative is for us all to live with such high levels of suspicion and anxiety about the intentions of our neighbors, the safety of our food and — especially these days — the continuing existence of our pension funds, that half the population would be unable to sleep at night. I trust and hope that doesn't sound unreasonable.
From the Amazon.fr site:
Biographie de l'auteur Christopher Hitchens est une célébrité incontournable de la presse anglo-saxonne : Anglais en exil à Washington, diplômé d'Oxford en philosophie, sciences politiques et sciences économiques, il est écrivain et chroniqueur à Vanity Fair, Harper's Magazine, Vogue, The London Review of Books, ainsi que dans le supplément littéraire du Times. A son propre amusement, il a été placé au cinquième rang des 100 plus grands intellectuels d'aujourd'hui par le magazine américain Foreign Policy et le mensuel britannique Prospect.
Dutch Freedom Party MP and platinum blond bombshell Geert Wilders has been banned by the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith from entering the UK on public security grounds. This seems a little unfair on Mr Wilders, as Ms Smith allowed Ibrahim Mousawi, the chirpy chief spokesman of Hizbollah, to enter Britain last May, and dear old Salman Rushdie, whose presence threatens the safety of everyone within a 50-yard radius, gets to come and go without hinderence from the Home Office.
Mr Wilders, 45, had been invited by Lord Pearson of Rannoch to show his anti-Islam film 'Fitna' and hold a question and answer session in Parliament on Thursday. However, a letter from the Home Office to Mr Wilders said that in the view of Miss Smith "your presence in the UK would pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society". It carried on that Miss Smith was "satisfied that your statements about Muslims and their beliefs, as expressed in your film Fitna and elsewhere, would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK". The 17-minute film, which likens Islam to Nazism and links it to terror attacks, has been described as "offensively anti-Islamic" by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.
So it seems we have another flashpoint in the clash of civillizations following The Satanic Verses, Submission and those dreadful cartoons. And this time, the British have yielded to the Islamic rage boys that Hitch has so often warned us about. Doubtless we'll be hearing from our lad on this subject shortly, and in the mean time, my own two new pence worth is that Smith's decision is the wrong one and the justification she offered betrays a lamentable lack of understanding of the real fundamental interests of society and sends precisely the wrong message to those who are intent on closing the open society down. And the day when "offensively anti-Islamic" can trump "freedom of expression" is the day we come a little closer to choking on the fumes of censorship.
My interest in this latest incident was piqued when I came across the name of Baron Nazir Ahmed, who became the UK's first Muslim life peer in 1998. (Something else we can thank Tony Blair for!) Lord Ahmed, who took his oath on the Qur'an, can be commended for being offended at Fitna, but he should be roundly rebuked for attempting to block the screening of the movie at the House Of Lords. In 2005, Lord Ahmed hosted a lunch party at the House for Israel Shamir, a writer whose work is as offensive to many Jews as Wilders work is to many Muslims. If the presence of Shamir (whose writing I admire for its pluck and indefatiguability) is not a threat to public security, this can only be because Jewish extremists are better behaved on British soil than are their Muslim counterparts.
Incidentally, his Lordship also tried to lord it over Sir Salman Rushdie in 2006, when he wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister claiming to be appauled at the award of a knighthood and stating that Salman had "blood on his hands."
For the sake of consistency, I think we have to allow both Wilders and Shamir to have their day at the House of Lords or neither. And for the sake of argument, as well as of freedom of movement, conscience and expression, I much prefer allowing both to come and go without undue hinderance or restriction. The boundries of our freedoms are being compressed enough already without adding the interests of public security and the duty not to cause offense to the calculus.
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Former PM's daughter booted off the beeb for offensive remarks
This story is causing a good deal of cheering and jeering in the UK. Carol Thatcher, daughter of former Prime Minister Margret Thatcher, has been dropped from her slot as a roving reporter for the BBC's The One Show after making remarks deemed offensive — not on the air in front of millions but in the programme "green" room to an audience of 12, which is even smaller than the one reading this blog, and not about dogs but about cuddly toys, amphibians and a tennis player.
According to "sources", Carol made multiple references describing French tennis player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga as a "golliwog", "half-golliwog" and "golliwog Frog". The Guardian and The Mail are, as one would expect, tackling the story from entirely different angles. I find it hard either to commend or condemn the lady for her unfortnate outburst, but I do salute her creativity — "Golliwog frog" isn't a bad rhyme and just the sort of thing that David Irving could build into a decent Limerick. At the same time I regret her impropriety, but I save my scalding for the sneaky little so-and-so who snitched on her. He deserves to end up in the same circle of Hell as whoever made public Mel Gibson's private personal remarks about Jews, hic!, causing all the wars, hic!, in the world, hic!, to his arresting officer.
Could Margret's choice of bedtime reading have pre-programmed Carol Thatcher to go off bang?
Yes Carol's remarks, like Mel's and Hitch's, were spiteful in themselves and hurtful to various constituencies. As a dog lover, I'm still fuming over the claim that setters, even Irish ones, are stupid. And I'm sure that many people who wish to see better inter-ethnic respect and harmony are mortified by Carol's and Mel's outbursts. However, Carol and Mel were strongly influenced by their respective parents — surely mitigating circumstances in both cases. And they never meant their offensive comments to be out there in the public domain. While Hitch's salacious slander against a million Irish setters was actually intended to assault the airwaves. And yet Carol's been given the boot by the Beeb while Hitch has been defended by the same organization — the same organization that refuses to broadcast an aid appeal for the long-suffering denizens of Gaza, and can't even employ decent football commentators. No wonder P. Rat's been forced to sign up with Sky.
Just to prove I'm not obsessed only with burning skyscrapers in Manhattan, here's one from Beijing, and it's a beauty. The 44-story Television Cultural Tower housing the new Mandarin Oriental Hotel went up in an inferno on the evening of January 9 from unknown causes, and given the shoddy state of Chinese construction it would be no surprise to see it collapse into its own footprint at close to freefall speed.
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- A massive fire engulfed a newly constructed, unoccupied luxury hotel in central Beijing on Monday night as crowds watched a nearby fireworks display marking the end of Lunar New Year celebrations.
The cause of the blaze at the 40-story Mandarin Oriental is not known and there were no reports of injuries, according to CNN staff members who were at the scene. The fire began about 9 p.m. and continued to burn an hour later.
A plume of flames shot from the top of the structure as the fire quickly spread.
That's the question to be debated a Biola University in La Mirada, CA, between Christopher Hitchens and William Lane Craig on April 4.
Tickets are still available but they're being snapped up fast. It's a great opportunity to see and hear Hitch live, if you're into that sort of thing.
Time & Place Saturday, April 4, 7:30 pm Chase Gymnasium (with overflow sites on campus) Biola University Cost: $20 for Prime, $15 for Balcony, and $10 for Standard Tickets
Here's a clip of Gorgeous George interviewing Richard Seymour of Lenin's Tomb fame, easily one of the best and smartest political blogs in the entire blogosphere, about his new book The Liberal Defense of Murder. They discuss our hated enemy, The Fallen One, in the course of this powwow.
GG: How useful have these idiots [Hitchens, Aaronivitch] been to the war effort?
RS: I think that's a very good question. People often wonder, I mean, because they look like a marginal and discredited bunch, but if you take the arguments of the White House and the Pentagon and you compare them to what they've been saying, they're fairly close, the only thing is that they give them a sort of left or liberal gloss. The trouble is a lot people look at the White House press briefings and the Pentagon announcements, and just regard them cynically, you get someone like Christopher Hitchens, who had a mountainous reputation as a great writer, and indeed he was, and he uses his immense talents and his reputation on the left to sell exactly the same message. To some extent they are screening them from criticism.
GG: I've described him as the only known example of a butterfly metamorphosing back into a slug, and he did once write like an angel but now serves the devil. They've burned all their progressive, well most of them, credentials, will the ruling elite, will the reactionaries, have any further use for them? I mean, where does Hitchens fit in in the Obama era for example?
RS: I think it will be even more important--not Hitchens so much, I think he's really discredited himself to some extent. People ask me, is Christopher Hitchens ever going to come back to the Left, and I'd say do you want him back after all this? As a point of honor. But I think that that general school of thought is going to be more important.
Seymour makes some interesting comments here.
I think it is indeed the case that Hitchens has now been thoroughly discredited in the eyes of most serious people, and Hitchens Watch has clearly played the decisive role in this. Just take a look at this scientific graph the lab boys at HW came up with which unequivocally demonstrates this:
Chris' reputation has been sullied, and possibly, with a little luck, his career has been fatally wounded by his decision to hitch himself onto one of the greatest, and most foolish, blunders in the history of imperialism. He really went out on a limb for the glorious "intervention" in Iraq and it's hard to imagine anyone being any more wrong on anything than Hitch has been on this. Verily, it sometimes takes an intellectual to do something so stupid (although, to give him credit where credit is due, Hitchens was bang on when he predicted that the surge wouldn't work. Fortunately for the Iraqis, the level of violence did end up decreasing despite the surge).
So if I was Hitchens, I would be rather worried, like Dubya, about my legacy. History is not going to look back kindly on our Hitch. If he's lucky, he'll be remembered as a minor footnote on the page of history--one of a handful of intellectuals who at the turn of 21st century bizzarely backed, with a comical degree of hubris, a series of embarrassingly incompetent and failed wars, to their utter disgrace and collapse into disrepute.
On the heels of the last post I would like to raise a glass to the demotion of one of Hitchens fellow travelers from the pages of the Grey Lady. The delightful, never confused or constrained by facts Bill Kristol was finally relieved from duty.
Sadly No put it succinctly: "They finally said “buh-bye Bill” to the tirelessly careless William Kristol at the New York Times, ending a little more than a year of his fact-free and error-ridden columnizing at that newspaper. And Bill goes out like he came in — in a malodorous poof of intestinal methane gas:"
The more-than-a-little-icky, Daily Beast had more of the inside story on Christopher's Best Friend on Iraq.
"The source makes clear that the decision not to renew Kristol’s contract is not related to his neoconservative ideology—Kristol’s proximity to key Washington players ranging from Bush and Cheney to John McCain (whom he supported in 2000) was considered a distinct plus. His leading advocacy of the Iraq War also added to his appeal. Kristol was viewed as a mover and shaker whose ideas had ready impact on the political firmament in Washington. The problems that emerged were more fundamental. Kristol’s writing wasn’t compelling or even very careful. He either lacked a talent for solid opinion journalism or wasn’t putting his heart into it. A give-away came in the form of four corrections the newspaper was forced to run over factual mistakes in the columns, creating an impression that they were rushed out without due diligence or attention to factual claims."
Little things like not reporting his links to the Sarah Palin selection while being one of her biggest (and eventually sole) supporters in the media can't have helped. Although Kristol hustled over to WAPO as fast as his withered neocon legs would carry him, it seems a symbol of the decline of the fact free frothing fundamentalist fear mongers.
However, it may get him off Grey's Al Qaeda neocon death list.
Our Chris should be nervous on a more practical front, even Fox News may not survive for ever.
PS when you google Hitchens and Kristol our Hitchens watch is number 1.
The economist Paul Craig Roberts is one of my favorite paleocons. In 1981-82, as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan, he gained a dubious reputation as "the Father of Reaganomics." He has also done time at the Cato Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and is an acknowledged expert on the Soviet economy. He came out against the US-led Iraq War of 2003 and has spent much of the time since trying to alert the world to the complicity of elements within the US government in the events of 9/11, total corruption of the US corporate media, the dangers of the US becoming a de-facto police state, and last but by no means least, the nefarious schemes of the "Bush neocons", which he thinks may well include pushing the world towards nuclear Armageddon.
This is all very juicy stuff, and he has been presenting it in an increasingly urgent (some might even say "shrill") tone in recent years. Many people reject such views and are dismissive of those who voice them. But it is far from easy to dismiss Roberts as a crank both because he is a well respected intellectual and because he was for many years a successful establishment insider, as his CV and honors amply attest. His latest column dated February 4, 2009 is one his most stimulating in ages. Entitled The War on Terror is a Hoax, it sets out to prove that claim by examining the evidence against outgoing President Bush's claim that America would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists. His first contention is intriguing:
The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist cells [in the US] is that not a single neocon has been assassinated.
Think about that factoid for a few seconds. Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Zoelick, John Bolton, Gary Schimtt, Richard Pearl, David Frumm, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, and William Kristol — Not a single one of these people has been shot or knifed on the street, blown to pieces by a well-placed bomb, beaten, bludgeoned or trampled, stabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella, or kidnapped and tortured slowly and agonizingly to death in a cellar and with the commemorative movie posted on YouTube.
The US deals with al Qaeda and Taliban by assassinating their leaders, and Israel deals with Hamas by assassinating its leaders. It is reasonable to assume that al Qaeda would deal with the instigators and leaders of America’s wars in the Middle East in the same way.
Today every al Qaeda member is aware of the complicity of neoconservatives in the death and devastation inflicted on Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. Moreover, neocons are highly visible and are soft targets compared to Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. Neocons have been identified in the media for years, and as everyone knows, multiple listings of their names are available online.
Neocons do not have Secret Service protection. Dreadful to contemplate, but it would be child’s play for al Qaeda to assassinate any and every neocon. Yet, neocons move around freely, a good indication that the US does not have a terrorist problem.
If, as neocons constantly allege, terrorists can smuggle nuclear weapons or dirty bombs into the US with which to wreak havoc upon our cities, terrorists can acquire weapons with which to assassinate any neocon or former government official.
Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims, remain unscathed.
I've long thought along these same lines myself. In a proper dirty war, the assassinations come thick and fast, and in a real WOT peopled by real terrorists who hate our freedoms, or by dedicated adversaries who hate the liberties we take abroad, the neocons would be among the most high profile targets. They would be slaughtered like sheep as a matter of honour. Al Qaeda, if they were fighting against the US, wouldn't even have to send their own people into "the Homeland". They would only need to hire a few professional assassins in the same way drug barons and casino kings do. But they don't, so they aren't, so isn't, if you get my drift. Or in other words, no dead neocons is a strong argument in favor of the WOT being a hoax.
Americans in the homeland — minor neocons and fellow travelers included — are not completely out of the woods on this one. Now that Roberts has pointed out the assassination dog that hasn't barked, somebody may step up and yank at its tail. The outpouring of anti-Muslim sentiment after the savage murder in Amsterdam of Theo Van Gogh by a young Dutch Muslim of Moroccan extraction shows that the PR value of such killings cannot be overestimated. And I daresay it wouldn't be too difficult to arrange something that could be sold to the police and the public as a genuine Al Qaeda hit. Suitable victims would not be members of the Fraternity of Neoconservative Gentlemen but they would be high-profile allies who had been useful in furthering the cause — the sort of people who would make good targets if Al Qaeda really was in the assassination business. Heaven forefend it, but a shocking and awful flesh-and-blood sacrifice that would gain the neocons some sympathy and answer the complaints of the likes of Paul Craig Roberts may well be on the cards.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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