Tim Wilkinson, at his Spartan (19 posts since 1997 and no pictures!) and thoroughly scholarly blog Surely Some Mistake?, has offered up the most insightful review I've yet seen of Peter Hitchens's latest book The Broken Compass, his latest lament on the decline and fall of British politics and all who sail in her.The main focus of Tim's post is on Peter's analysis of British former Trotskyite popinjays (drink-soaked, fag-fogged or coke-dusted) and other less colorfully plumaged chirpers, cheepers and warblers of the "neocon" dawn chorus, including those bold enough to have scratched their beaks on the signature column of the Euston Manifesto. (The opening section is below the photo.)
Nick Cohen (absolutely no sign of substance abuse there) is the thinking Brit's Pat Condell. But could Peter Hitchens really have sunk so low as to use the notorious anti-Muslim drama queen and Sarah Palin fanboy as a voodoo doll to get a few stabs in at big brother Christopher?
The history of most neocons is a strange one. Many are ex-Trotskyites subsequently affiliated to the Democratic Party, only later moving to the right (along some axes) to form an influential part of the Republican party apparatus. The neocons' Global War on Terror and anti-Islamic rhetoric seems to have prompted a similar phenomenon in the UK, with a number of prominent left-wingers rallying to the cause.
A group of such journalists even produced the rather thin 'Euston Manifesto' to formalise their new alignment (Euston being the area of London in which it was devised). Among the left-wing converts to GWOTism is, famously, Christopher Hitchens, whose brother Peter attempts in his recent book The Broken Compass to explain this phenomenon, diplomatically using not his brother but another Eustonian journalist , Nick Cohen, as exemplar. Hitchens (the unadorned surname will henceforth signify Peter) cites Cohen's scurrilous assertion that 'a million liberal-minded people marched through London to oppose the overthrow of a fascist dictator' as typifying the crude trickery and misrepresentation that Cohen brought to bear in the service of his newfound belligerence (in similar mode Cohen has recently taken to smearing those who raise doubts about the surely unsafe conviction of the alleged Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi).
Hitchens rightly suggests that an explanation is required for how a supposedly left-wing commentator (Cohen, doing double duty for Hitchens, C) has adopted the openly authoritarian, born-again Zionist ("it was clear to me that when Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel it had declared war and had to accept the consequences. I would not have thought that five years ago") and implicitly American Supremacist GWOT agenda. Hitchens's explanation for this whole-cloth adoption of neocon propaganda is threefold: first, a hatred of religion (this perhaps aimed more at his flamboyantly Atheist brother than his nominal target); second, a soft-focus way of retreating from an imputed anti-Zionist past; and third and most prominently, a desire to recant 'leftist' mistakes and move closer to a conservative position. As Hitchens puts it:
"Left-wing dogmatists can appear to change their minds, and be given credit (or be enjoyably attacked by their former comrades) for having done so, without undergoing any true revolution."
There is certainly something in this, but it is hard to agree entirely with some of Hitchens's presuppositions. He claims, largely on the evidence of a book by renegade left-winger Andrew Anthony, that the Eustonians (and perhaps by implication the Neo-cons) have seen the error of their ways in regard to "crime, Leftist excuse-making, double-think about the Soviet Union, multiculturalism, vandalism, crime, the catch-all accusation of 'racism' and the uselessness of a liberalised police force." The basic conception of the GWOT as providing the Eustonians with the 'acceptable' face of recantation may be correct (and Hitchens seems correct that the anti-religious aspect plays a part in making the position palatable to them - along with the rhetoric of freedom and human rights, which could probably be adapted to almost any foreign policy position). But the nature of that recantation and the motivation for it are not to my ear correctly described.
Yes, it's that time again. Time for D'Souza and Hitchens' weekly debate. Jesus fucking Christ I wonder how much money these two traveling mountebanks have made off of this stale and repetitive dog-and-pony show on the road that just never seems to end. And this might even be the biggest crowd of rubes they've played yet. Stadium sophists you could say.
You can find all the parts on this Youtube channel.
As usual, D'Souza has a bunch of brand new specious apologetics and excuses for his crackpot religious dogma, while, of course, Hitchens dodges the overwhelming majority of them and instead prattles on, filibusters, and waffles with his same old material we've heard him say millions of times. Gems like how Jesus didn't exist, and how Stalin so wasn't an atheist.
In my humble opinion these debates are in fact incontrovertible proof that a just God does not exist. Surely a just God would never allow these debates to keep happening, debates which cause so much suffering and boredom for so many. A merciful God would have hit UCF with a meteor or something right before they started so we wouldn't have to sit through this all over again.
And you know, instead of a fight over God at UCF, I would have much preferred a UFC fight over God between these two. A nice cage-match fight to the death between The Pugnacious Popinjay VS. Double-D The Dostoevsky-Wannabe would really demonstrate who was right on matters celestial once and for all and fair and square. Now that would actually be entertaining.
Hey my sweet Hitch watchers. After a period of "workingyourbuttoffedness", I decided to give you a little light viewing in memoriam of the despicable Kristol (may he rest in peace) and to tweak my friend Greywolf. The anniversary of the Deathstar. Please click and enjoy the goodness. Since the 9/11 anniversary has just passed it is time enough.
The phrase comes from King Pyrrhus of Epirus, a Molossian general during the Hellenistic era (About 290 BC). His army, strapped with wooden spears and towering elephants, defeated the Romans at the Battle of Heraclea but lost too many lives and resources to continue their military campaign. To this day, a "Pyrrhic victory" is used to describe any victory won at too great a cost. But what does this ancient warlord and his subsequently spawned phrase have to do with Christopher Hitchens?
Christopher Hitchens' prize book was given the title: "god is not Great" That's not a mistake, by the way. It's supposed to be spelled with a lowercase g. Hitchens insisted that the word "God" be written without the capital G in his title. Perhaps Hitchens wanted to emphasize the false sense of respect given to gods and religion by violating the rules of punctuation in some brazen show of defiance. Here at Hitchens Watch, we'll be referring to his book as, "God is not Great", with a capital G. Not out of respect for the divine, but out of respect for proper English. The Judeo-Christian "God" is a proper noun, which should be capitalized. Also, everything in a title except articles, conjunctions, and prepositions should be capitalized. We're just following the rules of the English language. Plus, we want to stick it to Hitchens.
"God is not Great" sold thousands of copies and was ranked as a best seller. Eventually it was made available on audio book by Hachette Book Group, a publishing company. The book was read aloud by Christopher himself! Readers could now enjoy the sparkling prose of Hitchens with the quivering, drunken voice included. Of course, like any form of digital media exposed to our world of Internet file-swapping, it leaked. Someone purchased the tape (or CD or mp3) and uploaded it to Youtube, allowing any user to hear the entire book, for free.
Seizing the opportunity, I posted the link along with the following message on my Youtube channel:
DO NOT BUY "God is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens! You can hear it FOR FREE, as read by Christopher:
Don't bother following that link, though. It doesn't work. There you'll find a blank page with the text:
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
But why did this happen? It wasn't because Hachette Book Group wanted to protect their investment. It's far more sinister than that. Four days earlier, I received a private message on Youtube from the user "hitchenschannel", a Hitchens fanboy whose Youtube channel is, according to him, "supported by Christopher Hitchens." He wrote to me,
"Nice job taking away Hitchen's [sic] book profits by linking to that video. Too bad I'm going to have the video taken down. Dumbass. Hitchens rules."
It wasn't Hatchette Book Group that filed the copyright claim, it was hitchenschannel! He manipulated the system by filing a claim on their behalf, falsifying his identity and insisting that their copyrighted material be protected. In fact, under the rules of the DMCA, anyone can file a copyright claim online and the video must be taken down immediately, even if the claims are later found to be bogus. Of course, a false DMCA claim is punishable by law. But it's not fines and penalties that hitchenschannel should fear - it's his own actions. By removing the video, he blocked access of Hitchens content to thousands of people. Great job, hitchenschannel. The book is no longer online. Nobody can see it. In a single act, he has negated his entire purpose for existing: the spreading of Hitchens-related content across Youtube.
So the audio book is gone. I'll remove the broken link from my profile. I'll take it down. I'll lose this battle. But like a battered Roman soldier, I crawl up from the creek at Heraclea and smile. Their forces have won this battle. But at what cost?
WARNING, those with a weak heart or an appreciation of Not The Nine O'Clock News-style comedy may find this video fatal. Absolutely do not watch it while nibbling peanuts. It stars Griff Rhys Jones in the title role, and I've stuck it up as an adjunct to the previous post on bullshit. Many of us have wondered over the years how the Hitch went from being a normal mild-mannered Trotskyist journo to the colossus he is today. This video explores a possible theory. Next question, when did Christopher's wife first get the microwave installed?
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Why are the US forces still in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Christopher has given an answer to this question on numerous occasions. Most recently: We (and not the Royal "We") are in a long war against Islamic terrorism, with you guys going off to that killing field over there to toughen yourselves up so later you'll be ready to keep on fighting when we send you on over to the next killing field, while I stay here in DC dining out with my neocon friends (the only ones I've got left), insulting waiters, and giving you my unreserved moral support. This toughening up argument flies in the face of the sad fact that the average US soldier is a total nervous wr.. wr.. wreck within t.. t.. t.. two years. Like those long-life Gillette razors, even the sharpest blades tend to loose their edge rather quickly in modern guerilla warfare. But as Carl Hermon reminds us, "Iraq and Afghanistan don't need US troops for security. They can ask the UN if they want help." After all, that's what the UN is there for.
One of the arguments for US troops to remain in the two countries we invaded is that even if our wars were mistakes, it’s our duty to stay until those countries can manage their own security. If US troops leave, we’ll subject civilians to escalating violence.
As eminent Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt distinguished in his 2005 Bestseller as a strictly academic term, that rhetoric is bullshit.
When political “leadership” makes that argument, it’s a lie of omission. Without the comprehensive information that Iraq and Afghanistan have full authority within their governments to make that determination for themselves, that statement is misleading Americans into thinking that US security is their only option. It is not.
Speaking On Bullshit, Professor Frankfurt's book of that title is new to me, but it looks absolutely fascinating. According to the website intro:
One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."
Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.
Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
In addition to the English version, the book has already been translated into 15 other languages. Unfortunately, though, it is yet to appear in Bilge, Piffle, Mumbo Jumbo or Gobbledygook, so Hitchens fanboys and assorted Decents the world over will have to wait a while to read it yet.
Why do so many people despise Ann Coulter? Could it be that the media is dominated by liberals like Katie Couric who have absolutely no sense of humor?
However, conservatives like Mssrs. Hannity and Colmes can see through the charade and recognize the subtle difference between mad and sublime.
Mr. Beck also shares Ann's sense of humor and her concerns about the double standard that discriminates against outspoken conservative commentators.
And besides being seriously funny as well as an excellent conversationalist, Ann also makes great parody material.
Christopher penned a review of Ann's Godless: The Church of Liberalism for a UK magazine named, appropriately enough The Liberal. He provides the sort of analysis that most liberal readers will comfortably assent to and he does it extremely well. Although of course, identifying Ann's more obvious flaws is a good deal easier than defending US policy in Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan, but let's give him his due. In a nutshell:
I have the distinct feeling that people do not buy Ann Coulter’s creed-screeds and speed-reads in order to enhance their knowledge of history or their command of syllogism. She has emerged as a persona because she has mastered the politics of resentment, and because she can combine the ideology of Human Events (the obscure ‘Joe McCarthy was right’ magazine) with the demand of the chat-show bookers for a tall blonde with a very rapid delivery on a wide range of subjects.
But Hitch, who meets the equivalent media demand for a short, fat, and permanently dishevelled slime artist with a posh British accent and a flair for the grotesque, fails completely to see the funny side of Ann as he puts on his po-iest of po-faces in summing her up as follows:
"Coulter, the super-patriot and flag-waver, is a true reactionary in that she yearns for the time when the keyword of her title, as in ‘Godless Communism’, was a mantra for the simple-minded. In a world where the true enemies of civilization are much, much more godly than the blonde goddess of the hard Right, Coulter is reduced to a blitzing of soft civilian targets – one redeemed only by its built-in tendency to fall so wide of the mark.
And yet, the biggest joke of all — I will not go as far as calling it an "irony" — is that Christopher and Ann are on exactly the same side on the one big issue that really separates the boy scouts from the girl guides: the need for America to keep carrying the white man's burden in an endless war against people who hate us for our freedoms. And that I find ridiculously funny.
Now you've done your churchin', you're allowed to go to the movies. And this time, since I spent the 9/11 anniversary putting out a manure cart load of fascist crackpottery (although I hope you noticed I refrained from sinister piffle), I'm going to show you a documentary from the other side in which Christopher plays a major role as an expert on the Middle East alongside that grand old man of Orientalism and Dick Cheney's favorite historian Bernard Lewis. (Incidentally, I highly recommend his work on the Assassins.) The movie's called Iraq: Conflict and Hope and it was written and produced in 2005 by a chap named Roger Aronoff and released around the fourth anniversary of 9/11. Here's the first ten minutes. Hitch makes his first appearance at about 4:38:
Hitchens: I think that what I'll call for now "Western Society" is rife with denial about what's meant by the struggle against Bin Ladinism, not just Bin Ladin, but Jihadism, I'll call it... Their religious mania, their hatred for non-orthodox Muslims, such as the Shia, their hatred for the Hindus, their utter loathing for the Jews and all Christians and of course secularists and atheists like myself, has to be read to be believed—you have to look at this stuff and go to their websites, and people don't.
If the shit on these Jihadi websites is as hateful as Hitch attests, it's probably just as well not to pay them a visit. After all, we wouldn't want to give ourselves nightmares, would we?
Iraq: Conflict and Hope has been praised as an attempt to tell the real story of why 9/11 happened and why the West had to do the "WOT" and the Iraq War, but it has also been criticized by critics who bothered to comment on it at all as biased, propagandistic, and even a right-wing version of Fahrenheit 911. I wouldn't go quite that far, but there is something in the comparison, which make Christopher a teensy weensy bit hypocritical for blasting Michael Moore as Detroit's answer to Leni Riefenstahl.
To establish mood, the movie opens with scenes from Beirut in 1983, Lockerbie in 1988, and Kuwait in 1990. My own thoughts were, if Arnoff's trying to link all these to militant Islam he's on very dodgy ground. But, like Moore, Gore or Riefenstahl, this film-maker is out to emotionalize the issues. When he flashed up a picture of the Khobar Towers (1996), a little voice inside my head cried, "that's the spittin' image of Oklahoma! And Tim McVeigh must have been a patsy; because no way could a fertilizer truck bomb have done that!" But it's a great opening for all that.
(Hitch comes in to talk about the Fatwa at about 7 minutes in.) Please don't get me wrong. I would really like to believe this narrative, but to tell the truth I'm not even agnostic on Arnoff's thesis — from Clinton's failure to fight terror to our glorious victory at Tora Bora. But it is a well-made documentary with a compelling and authoritative feel. It's just that once you've seen The Power of Nightmares, you can never look at the Al-Qaeda menace in quite the same way again. And once you have seen Adam Gadahn & Yousef al-Khattab outed, you'll probably realize we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Roger Aronoff is a media analyst with Accuracy in Media. He has a long-running column posted at The American Daily, and although I disagree with about 75% of his opinions, I find him a much better read than Hitch in Slate — perhaps because he writes down to my level.
Accuracy in Media seems to be part of that vast right wing conspiracy to crucify Hillary's husband, although at the moment they are on a frenzy of exposing "the 'true identity' of Van Jones!!" (At a glance, I'd say it's a toss-up between the illegitimate son of Anwar Sadat and the lead singer with Hot Chocolate.) AIM is not universally acknowledged to be free from inaccuracy in its own media activities, as this report from Illiberal Conservative Media reports. Still, you know our Hitch; one free drink and he'll talk to anyone.
As it's Sunday, we invite you to turn away from the profane, mundane world and contemplate the sacred with a secular saint who expresses his own trademark brand of contempt for religion — Christopher Hitchens, interviewed by Sally Quinn.
In this bit, Hitch talks about his childhood, his religious education, how he regards himself as Jewish although not a Zionist, and how atheists are born not made — the doctrine of innateness again!
On the difference between atheism and agnosticism, which Hitch groups together and seals with a loving QED, and on the downside of having a God to watch over you.
Here is the video of the friendly chat between Peter Robinson asking the questions about Leon Trotsky and Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service taking turns to answer them on the Uncommon Knowledge program. We have covered this one before, but now the entire 36-minute interview is available and it is well worth listening to. The conversation ranges around Trotsky, who he was, what he did, what if he had led the Revolution instead of Stalin, and why did Hitch call himself a Trotskyist. If only Trotsky had inherited Lenin's job, amuses Hitchens, there would have been less anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. For Service, a Trotsky administration would probably have caused a major European conflict in the 1920s as the Reds attempted to export the revolution by force of arms. Also, Hitch informs us that Trotsky saw himeslf as "a Cosmopolitan". Classic.
If the video isn't working, you may be able to catch it at this link .
Donald Rumsfeld and his chums made "Shock and Awe" a household term when he used it to describe the 2003 US-led military campaign against Iraq, but it had been in use as a euphemism for the doctrine of rapid dominance for several years before that time. Whether or not the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US were intended to shock and awe the general public, they certainly had that effect, and in my opinion this had at least as much to do with the mass media coverage and reaction than with the nature of the attacks themselves, shocking and awful though they undoubtedly were.
A year before 9/11, in September 2000, the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century published a report entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century which contains the sentence that launched a thousand conspiracy theories: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor". The PNAC sought to influence the thinking and policy making of the G.W. Bush administration, and influence it they did in several ways. While we cannot know if the President's dairy entry for the night of September 11, 2001 bore witness to such influence, it is intriguing that he dictated: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.... We think it's Osama bin Laden."
Eight years on, and we have a lot more answers concerning 9/11 but a lot more unanswered questions too. We also have three presidents, Clinton Bush and Obama, on record as telling us Al Qaeda did 9/11—which when you think about it, isn't an answer at all—and an army of paid media shills and propagandists ridiculing anyone who wants to establish the facts and bring the perpetrators of the atrocity to justice as a "moonbat", a "truther", a "conspiracy theorist", or an "America hater". So on the anniversary of that terrible day, the least those of us who are still tormented by the refusal of those in authority and leadership positions to join the dots and complete the jigsaw puzzle can do is to go down to the kitchen, make a hat from a square of baking foil and become a truther for a day. After all, it's only once a year and there really is so much to ponder. When confronted with the scale of the atrocity, the accompanying web of lies and deceit, and the sheer gob-smacking chutzpah of whoever it was that masterminded the operation, wearing a tinfoil hat for a day begins to look like a rational response as well as an appropriate fashion statement.
For those who are interested, the links below lead to a few of the many thousands of 9/11 "loose ends" that have yet to be tied and trimmed. For those without the time or inclination to spend on that sort of thing, I'd like to leave you with just one loose end of my own. It concerns the state of the WTC site after the collapses of the Twin Towers. According to the official account, these two structures each underwent a gravitationally-driven total collapse due to structural failure when a weakness close to the point of impact and fire caused all the supporting columns on one or more floors to give way simultaneously, causing a pile-driver style process in which the momentum of the section above the point of initial failure was sufficient to trigger a progressive collapse of the entire structure all the way dow to the basement.
The loose end I'd like to point out here is that in the picture above (click for an expanded version), which is an official FEMA shot, although the massive steel columns of the buildings'central cores have disappeared, we can clearly see large portions of the exterior walls still standing. In fact they are the remains of the perimiter steel columns that constituted the load-bearing "mosquito net" grid around each tower. The mass of each Twin Tower has been estimated at between 288,100 and about 500,000 metric tons here, which is an awful lot of building. We are expected to believe that this enormous amount of mass fell all the way down to ground level, smashing the core, which was by far the strongest part of the structure, and yet it left these perimeter columns standing up to a height of four stories in places. The idea of steel-framed skyscrapers undergoing gravity-driven total collapses stretches the credulity of anyone who has ever played around with Young's modulus or Meccano, but the idea that they can do so while leaving substantial sections of their outer walls standing takes us well beyond empirical science and into the realm of faith-based magical thinking.
Call me a cantankerous old cretin if it makes you feel any better, but I can't work out how those walls could have been left standing unless the buildings had been explosively demolished in such a way as to progressively throw or blow their contents, including floors and cores, upwards and outwards in a manner that brings back childhood memories of fireworks such as the Roman candle. And it is fascinating to note that when we look at video recordings of the collapses of the twin towers, they do indeed resemble exploding Roman candles more than they do fire-induced collapses or conventional explosive demolitions.
When Pandora's Box is finally fully opened on the deceptions and abuses of power by the Cheney/Bush administration ~ the 9/11 conspiracy and cover up will stand alone as the most treasonous act in American history. Here are 40 experts, including Commission members, who share their misgivings about the 9/11 Commission and the questions left unanswered....
It was Carl Sagan who wrote of the Bamboozle Effect which seems to have effected many Americans ~ " One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge , even to ourselves, that we’ve been so credulous." — Allen L Roland
President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN....
Although the president and vice president told Daschle they were worried a wide-reaching inquiry could distract from the government's war on terrorism, privately Democrats questioned why the White House feared a broader investigation to determine possible culpability.
Since Hitch the Elder has been hiding his talents under a bushel of late, now seems as good a time as any to turn our gaze toward the work of Hitch the Younger, the twenty five-year-old Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, who like his dad has turned his hand to political writing and with a special focus on alerting the world to the threat of Islamic fascism.
Where "Mad Dog" Hitchens — the frothy-lipped Ceberus of godlesness — is renowned for biting, barking and foaming at the mouth, Junior is as yet only able to snap, lick and get under people's feet, but he's learning fast and has already been cited for his "swift rise in the British Neocon firmament".
In what might be described as an intellectual evolutionary leap of the Lamarkian kind, Alex, has inherited some generous dollups of Christopher's hard-earned Decency fully matured, without having to go through all that bothersome Marxism, Trotskyism or anti-war activism along the way. At an age when his dad was still shapening his left-wing militant claws at the New Statesman and was yet to go through that pupy love infatuation with Saddam Hussein, young Alex has already worked as a researcher for two London-based conservative think tanks, the Policy Exchange established by Nicholas Boles and Michael Gove, and Douglas Murray's Centre for Social Cohesion, which has been lauded by Melanie Phillips as "invaluable", while Osama Saeed of the Scottish-Islamic Foundation has described both organizations as "right-wing stinktanks".
Despite his youth, Alex has also managed to get himself an occasional blog with The Telegraph, where last October he wrote some wonderfully sensible "Afghanistan for Dummies" prose about the difference between the Karzai government and the Taliban opposition:
One group represents a democratically elected government opposed to strict Sharia law and the rule of the Mullahs. The other speaks for a fascist theocratic movement which has been carrying out a campaign of terror on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, the most recent manifestation of which, according to the Pakistani Interior Ministry, was the murder of over 50 people in the bombing of the Islamabad Marriott.
Now that NATO has just doubled that kill rate and may have even beaten its own previous one-day record by murdering at least 90 and possibly 150 people in an air strike on two fuel tankers in Kunduz, it might be fun to hear how Alex fits them into his little morality play. But collateral damage notwithstanding, he shares his father's penchant for violent aggression rather than negotiation, in stark contrast with the well known Churchillian preference for jaw jaw over war war:
While armed conflict may not on its own be enough to defeat the Taliban, it does not follow that negotiating with them is the only other option. Rather the inference must be that as well as military force, other means by which to defeat them must be explored.
With our brave bombers reduced to exploring the deep-frying of old people and children, one can only assume that both Alex and Christopher are well pleased with themselves. For when one wills the means, what else can one do but cheer the ends? As the above link reports:
Afghan villagers bury their dead in Kunduz after their run-in with NATO's well-meaning occupation forces. While the survivors may not appreciate the difference between horrific mass murder inflicted by totalitarian Islamo-fascist terrorists and horrific mass murder inflicted by friendly democratic and secular liberators, it is hoped that they may find some solace in their Islamic faith. After all, stuck there between the the Taliban, the warlords and the do-gooders in khaki from America and Europe, there isn't much else for them, is there?
At about 10 P.M., a group of Taliban fighters high jacked two tanker trucks carrying fuel for NATO occupation forces some ten kilometers south of Kunduz city. The incident was reported by German forces to the NATO air command. Soon after the high jacking, the trucks tried to cross a small river and one of the vehicles got stuck in the mud about two kilometers from the village of Omar Khel. The Taliban present tried to disengage the tanker but failed. In order to make it easier to move the truck, they drained fuel. For reasons which remain unclear, word reached nearby villagers who rushed to the scene to get free fuel. At this point two United States Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles appeared and at 2:30 A.M. dropped two 500-pound bombs guided by a global positioning JDAM system. The predictable took place: a huge explosion which incinerated a large number of persons, killing and wounding many. Villagers said their relatives were siphoning fuel from the hijacked trucks and were burned alive in a giant fireball. Apparently, the American F-15E pilots and co-pilots dropped the two bombs upon the immobilized trucks, revealing an obvious lack of sensitivity as to who might actually be in the group of people around the trucks. The dearth of accurate ground intelligence possessed by U.S/NATO forces in Afghanistan is legendary. In other words, a deadly air strike was launched upon a target where the probability of civilians being present was high.
Alex has more regular and current blog going at Standpoint Magazine, where his main theme remains the fight against Islamic fascism, as if there were no other kinds that represented a danger to civilization as we know it. Just this week, he has been writing about "a high level meeting in Beirut between between members of Hamas, Hizbullah, Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood" as if this were the Islamic equivalent of a convention bringing together Count Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, Freddy, Jason and Charles Manson.
This meeting is one of a number of recent examples where different Islamist groups have set aside past differences in order to fight the greater evils of Israel and America. Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizbullah have been openly working together for a number of years. Hizb-ut-Tahrir's involvement is perhaps the most striking as their past relationship with Hizbullah and Hamas can best be described as strained. However, given that all of these groups share the same basic ideology, it is not suprising that they are willing to help each other.
No, it is not surprising at all, but Alex seems nonetheless flabbergasted to discover that groups with similar aims and similar adversaries are not only pursuing those aims and fighting those adversaries, but they are actually contemplating joining forces to generate greater synergies. Alex goes on to clarify the purpose of the meeting as "to ensure continued violence against Israel and ruin Obama's plans for a peaceful settlement", as if there were any chance of those plans coming to fruition in the first place. He also attempts to etch out a potted statement of the psychology of the Islamist mindset and give President Obama some firm words of advice.
Meetings like this serve to illustrate the folly in treating Islamists as if they were rational, as it discounts the fact that these people are driven by a rigid religious ideology which compels them to force their totalitarian will on the world. Obama must understand that there is absolutely nothing he can do to change this and even if he appeased their each and every demand, there will always be a grievance: that 'Islam' does not reign supreme.
Real warriors as opposed to propagandists will be aware that the folly of treating irrational enemies as if they were rational pales into insignificance besides the suicidal strategy of treating rational enemies as if they were irrational. But apart from that, from a young man who has signed the Unite Against Terror manifesto and been cited with his own entry on the Neocon Europe wiki, we are witnessing a very Decent attempt to play Julian Lennon to Christopher's John.
Doug Stanhope makes the point about the 'Decent We' better than I ever could. Doug does two things: 1: calls the beast by its correct name (no, not 'secularism' Christopher, it's nationalism, get that? It's nationalism you stand for, American nationalism, not secularism, or atheism, or anything else you delude yourself that it's really about, nationalism, got that, yes?). And 2: in his last line sums up what 'We' should say about those American Nationalists who use the 'Decent We' better than I ever could. And now, enjoy. (Warning: NSFW: contains rude words).
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"The deadliest imaginable enemies in the most arduous possible terrain"
Less stout-hearted stalwarts of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders such as George Will and Tom Friedman have retreated from the trenches but Lance Corporal Christopher Hitchens remains doggedly at his post, catapulting off ever more desperate bursts of propaganda on behalf of the Junta that released the Afghan Hounds of War. With Hitch, you never quite know whether he's going to ventriloquize Henry the Fifth, Rudyard Kipling, or the drill sargent from Full Metal Jacket.
This time, he's decided once again to harp on the utilitarian benefits of maintaining a fit fighting force by keeping them fighting.
The question of whether we can or should protect potentially pluralist regimes, whatever their shortcomings, either directly or from "over the horizon" is not, as some critics condescendingly put it, a matter of "babysitting" or "adoption." It is a question of how long-term we are prepared to think. And here are two long-term considerations: The first is the training and traction that will be required for a long war against Islamic terrorism, and the second is the inescapable question of Iran.
However much and however justifiably the press prefers to lay the emphasis on stories of "overstretch" or "post-traumatic stress disorder," it remains the case that we have been schooling a superb generation of soldiers who have the irreplaceable advantage of having fought, and in many cases vanquished, the deadliest imaginable enemies in the most arduous possible terrain. This means that if, say, the government of the Philippines or Indonesia or India or any of the other Asian democracies should request assistance against the same foe, we would be able to supply them with a wealth of expertise as well as a fair bit of muscle. Whatever political decisions are made about our posture toward the rather sketchy Karzai or Maliki governments, the long-term abilities conferred by this bitterly won battle-hardening constitute an asset that is unquantifiable. And it isn't merely combat experience, essential as that may be, but the learned ability to find ways of isolating, discrediting, and dividing the terrorists.
So there you have it folks, permanent war for permanent peace, and we'll keep fighting them over there while they fight us over here until the whole world's worn out, civilization's dead, and anyone still breathing will has been battered and brutalized back into the bronze age — a true Hitchlerian dystopia if ever there was one — and with the added demerits that everything will be as radioactive as the world of Mad Max III and the lucky survivors won't even be able to console themselves with religion because that will have been banned as a poison.
As a slight antidote to Hitchen's diseased and demented philosophy, here's Friedman:
It would be one thing if the people we were fighting with and for represented everything the Taliban did not: decency, respect for women’s rights and education, respect for the rule of law and democratic values and rejection of drug-dealing. But they do not. Too many in this Kabul government are just a different kind of bad. This has become a war between light black — Karzai & Co. — and dark black — Taliban Inc. And light black is simply not good enough to ask Americans to pay for with blood or treasure.
And Will:
"Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a [mine's] pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning."
"I'm sorry about the drama," writes Allen, an enthusiastic infantryman willing to die "so that each of you may grow old." He says: "I put everything in God's hands." And: "Semper Fi!"
Allen and others of America's finest are also in Washington's hands. This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."
Hitch does have a few other brave souls with him in his bunker, among them Bill Kristol, who despite a yellow streak a foot wide that prevented him from serving in Nam (he had a note from his mom!), is a real Terminator once he's actually embarked on a mission. In response to Will, Bill makes clear why he thinks "we're" really in Afghanistan:
George Will is dismayed by American casualties in Afghanistan, unhappy about the length of our effort there, dismissive of the contributions of our NATO allies, contemptuous of the Afghan central government, and struck by the country’s backwardness.
I share many of these sentiments. But they are sentiments. It would be better to base a major change in our national security strategy on arguments--especially if you’re advocating a change from a policy that’s been supported for eight years by a bipartisan consensus, and that involves the area that was the staging ground for Sept. 11.
He does have a point. It really is well-beyond time that Americans and the rest of us became less sentimental and more argumentative. We really do need to attack and pacify the area that was the staging ground for September 11, apprehend the terrorists and those who harbored them and who continue to cover up their crimes. Unless we can do that, we'll never have the mangy mongrels of war off our backs.
Hitchens has really excelled himself in his 'new' column for Slate, which is really just a rehash of everything he has ever written since Osama Bin Laden brought down his capacity for rational thought on 9/11.
In one of his smart-arse aphorism like statements (I hesitate to call them 'aphorisms') Hitchens argued 'What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence'. Similarly, what is asserted without thought can be dismissed without thought. Still, while ignoring its 'rational' content, this piece, which is nothing more than a random collection of 'Decent' cliches, serves as some kind of Platonic ideal of the genre.
The most pernicious aspect of this piece is its consistent use of the Decent 'we', a word, which in the Decent lexicon, means 'someone other than myself', or to be clearer still, 'you': when the 'you' means 'people I don't know, have never met, who probably wouldn't like me if I did meet them, but who nevertheless fight and die in a country I rarely visit, whose language I do not speak, and whose culture I do not understand or like'.
Of course, sometimes this is not true. Sometimes 'we' means 'white middle class male policy makers in Washington'.
'The question of whether we can or should protect potentially pluralist regimes, whatever their shortcomings, either directly or from "over the horizon" is not, as some critics condescendingly put it, a matter of "babysitting" or "adoption." It is a question of how long-term we are prepared to think. And here are two long-term considerations: The first is the training and traction that will be required for a long war against Islamic terrorism, and the second is the inescapable question of Iran.'
'We'? In this sentence, Christopher Hitchens would seem to be claiming that he, personally, has the power and the ability to make a meaningful decision as to whether or not he should 'protect' 'pluralist' (i.e. pro-American) regimes. How? What superpowers will he be using? Again, of course, in this sentence 'we' means 'you': this time referring to his rich friends in Washington, who really do have this power and who have great influence over Christopher, at least when compared to the small influence Christopher has over them.
Like all neoconservatives Hitchens is a 'useful idiot' in that his real purpose is to provide intellectual cover (references to Hegel and Strauss and so forth) for people who really make the decisions, and who are motived by darker, more Machiavellian motives. And like neoconservatives, Hitchens is that saddest of creatures, a penpusher and keyboard basher who desperately wants to be a 'man of action'. This emerges in his almost homo-erotic description of 'our' armed forces.
'However much and however justifiably the press prefers to lay the emphasis on stories of "overstretch" or "post-traumatic stress disorder," it remains the case that we have been schooling a superb generation of soldiers who have the irreplaceable advantage of having fought, and in many cases vanquished, the deadliest imaginable enemies in the most arduous possible terrain'.
Whatever one might say about Orwell, it is literally inconceivable that even at his worst he would write the above example of linguistically dead, intellectually cliched prose. But then Orwell knew what it was like to fight because he had fought. When Orwell, in Spain, used the word 'we' he really meant 'we'. Hitchens 'knows' what it is like when 'we' fight because he has asked real soldiers in the bar, afterwards. There is a difference.
However, as with a poor radio transmission with a 'competing' signal which cuts in and out, the ghostly echo of truth can occasionally be heard, albeit faintly, in Hitchens' prose.
A brief recap. Since 1945, the American Empire has run an Empire which relies, to a very great extent, on cheap oil from an array of Arab puppet regimes. Following on from the British, the Americans have played 'divide and rule' setting Shia against Sunni. More specifically, the Americans have consistently backed the majority Sunnis against minority Shias (you would never ever know it from Hitchens' columns, but the majority of human rights abuses in the Arab world are not against Kurds specifically but against Shias). Iraq was invaded to prevent a democratic revolution which would have strengthened the (Iranian leaning) Shias: while both the Washington picked apprentice dictators (Chalabi and Allawi) were technically Shia, they were felt to be sufficiently 'secular' (i.e. pro-American) to be allowed to rule by the White Man.
But it went wrong, and Iran was greatly strengthened. Hence the current hysteria over Iran's (non-existent) nuclear weapons programme: it is a lie, a pretext to surround and then invade Iran (or alternatively, to provoke a coup). Iran is feared and loathed by the US because it is a beacon of hope to the oppressed Shia minorities in the Sunni led, American supported dictatorships.
A ghostly echo of this reality can be heard in this sentence: 'Among the extremists in Tehran, there have already been bellicose noises about Bahrain, for example: a monarchical Arab mini-state with a majority Shiite population that some claim to be rightfully Persian'.
Briefly, Bahrain is an American puppet regime, with a Sunni King and a Shia majority population. The Shias, unsurprisingly want freedom, justice and civil rights, and in this they have no sterner foe than Christopher Hitchens. Accusing their struggle for freedom of being 'pro-Iranian' is a similar line to that which Christopher Hitchens' right wing friends frequently used in the so-called Cold War: that (whoever), in fighting for democracy was being 'pro-Russian'.
'if Shi'ite ambitions are continually thwarted, the long-term stability of the islands where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based cannot be guaranteed.' (emphasis added).
It is Christopher's goal to ensure that Shi-ite 'ambitions' are thwarted, forever, and when he implies that 'we' must safeguard the position of the US Fifth Fleet, 'we' really does mean 'we'.
(Note: it's too long to write about here, but an echo too ghostly even to be picked up by the naked ear in Hitchens' columnis of the ongoing Yemen civil war, in which the American backed Saudi associated regime are fighting a Shia insurgency who are 'backed by Iran' (who else?) according to the 'Western' corporate media. The Americans are now trying to prop up the regime directly. Ongoing unrest in Bahrain is associated with this new Shia 'militancy' (i.e. demand for freedom and civil rights): to repeat, one will travel far and wide throughout the world before one finds someone who will treat Shia demands for democracy and justice with more contempt than our tubby little gin fuelled keyboard kommando).
If you thought Camp Sullivan referred to Hitch's friend Andrew, think again. It is, according to Daniel Schulman writing in Mother Jones, the place where the guys who guard the US Embassy in Kabul hang out. And my! how they hang out! Even the Taliban in all their glory never partied quite like this. Schulman also goes on to say that the Project on Government Oversight has sent a letter to Hilary Clinton:
... detailing a host of explosive charges relating to ArmorGroup's management of the embassy contract, including evidence of "near-weekly deviant hazing and humiliation of subordinates." According to POGO, "witnesses report that the highest levels of AGNA management in Kabul are aware of and have personally observed—or even engaged in—these activities, but have done nothing to stop them."
Shocked? Horrified? Disgusted? Don't be. As Christopher put it, "You should be ashamed for sneering at those who guard you while you sleep." Or, as he said during a debate with Chris Hedges:
But, to what I think is the hidden agenda of the question: 'Is George Bush on a Christian crusade in Iraq and Afghanistan?' Obviously not, obviously not. Anyone who's studied what's happening in either of those countries now knows that the whole of American policy -- and by the way a lot of your own future, ladies and gentlemen -- is staked on the hope that federal secular democrats can emerge from this terrible combat. We can protect them and offer them help while they do so. We know that they're there, that we are -- I've met them, I love them, they're our friends. Every member of the 82nd Airborne Division could be a snake-handling congregationalist, for all I know, but these men and women, though you sneer and jeer at them, and snigger when you hear applause and excuses for suicide bombers -- and you have to live with the shame of having done that -- these people are guarding you while you sleep, whether you know it or not. And they're also creating space for secularism to emerge, and you better hope that they are successful.
The fires in the hills around Los Angeles have been burning so fiercely that they've been producing their own "pyrocumulus" clouds. Click here to look at the time lapse video shot on August 30 by Brandon Riza.
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Will the global recession lead to a "New World Order"?
That's the question being asked these days by those paranoid conspiracy theorists down at BBC World News.
Back in 2007, Gordon Brown explained about the New World Order in a speech to the CBI.
Henry Kissinger also spoke very pertinently and at length about the need for a New World Order and "the desirable progress of globalization" using all three of his vocal cords simultaneously.
Naturally, even the most sensible and reasonable globalist ideas have their detractors. This last video consists of a collection of quotations from various well-known members of the US political and financial elite, some in favor and some against the idea of a one-world government, but all clearly cogniscent of the the push towards establishing one. This vid also includes Henry's prophetic 1991 blockbuster, "Today, Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow, they will be grateful!....."
The following four debates are now available on DVD. Who needs Arnold Swarzenegger?
The God Delusion Debate : Richard Dawkins & John Lennox in Birmingham, AL (2007) Has Science Buried God? : Richard Dawkins & John Lennox at Oxford University (2008) God on Trial : Dinesh D'Souza & Christopher Hitchens in St. Louis, MO (2008) Can Atheism Save Europe? : Christopher Hitchens & John Lennox at the 2008 Edinburgh International Festival
Fixed Point Foundation has produced a nice preview video on this. It has Dawkins admiting that a "reasonably respectable case" could be made for the deist God, Hitch grandstanding as usual, and John Lennox pointing out that many of the things atheists hold most dear are, ironically, the products of a Christian worldview.
I can't embed the video it here, so I'll just put in the link.
In the comments, Daniel has demonstrated he has some strong opinions on this issue, so for all you lazy surfers and Greywolf groupies who don't bother to read that far I'm going to post what he's said here:
Wow Hitchens destroys John Lennox twice in a row, and D'Souza gets owned for the (4th?) time. Poor D'Souza employing the same old tactics.
Dawkins admitting that DEISM, not THEISM, is reasonably respectable, is hardly a concession. It's instead evidence of the validity of Dawkins' honest and scientific examination - he is willing to consider the alternative and question it, unlike his brainwashed opponents.
John Lennox pointing out that what ahtiests hold most dear are products of a Christian worldview? What?? Which Christian worldview are we talking? Christianity taking claim for all the good morals (which are at BEST incidental, and usually contrary to Christianity).
Any 10 year old could come up with a list of ten commandments that is far better than the selfish, anthropocentric, sexist, violent and childish sadomasochism of the bronze age Christian texts, which still have to be heavily modified, comically and selectively 'interpreted' and revised by countless denominations and uneducated 'authorities'.
What do atheists hold dear? I'm sure atheists and religious people have a lot in common here: family, friends, happiness, justice, beauty, skill, art, music...
What else do atheists hold dear? Reason, logic, intellectual integrity, fairness, NOT brainwashing, NOT indoctrination, NOT circular arguments, NOT bigotry, NOT tactics of violence, torture, slavery and sexism. NOT intimidation and manipulation of children, refugees and everyone else for.. money! What else? Freedom, absence of a totalitarian authority that imposes its 'morals' on us.
Atheists value real people, not imaginary friends, honesty, not the ABSURD arrogance of theist claims (cloaked by Christian 'humility'). Atheists value the real world, happiness, and the timescale of the world on a scale beyond their own - unlike the extremely selfish and counterproductive doctrine of heaven/hell, vicarious redemption and UNDESERVED forgiveness by people who shouldn't have ANY authority, tax-exempt status or ANY say over politics.
Please take out religion and save our world from destruction. Hatred of women, gays, small collections of cells, Jews and whatnot.
We need Hitchens to keep fighting. He is a role model of intellectual integrity, answering every question, responding to every opponent, travelling, meeting with leaders and thinkers and writing BRILLIANT, comprehensive books.
Religion is nothing but an early attempt at science - and everything that we have STUDIED (and confirmed with overwhelming comprehensive evidence in many fields) has confirmed that religion's claims have been wrong. Stop being stubborn, stop stealing money, stop inciting these absurd concepts.
There's nothing else that religion could do to discredit itself. Affairs with male prostitutes after being vehemently anti-gay (on crystal meth), raping altar boys, suicide cults, murdering children, babies, doctors, suicide. etc. etc.
Now please, someone bring up the Hitler argument, and give me some evidence on this new theory I have---->
I am considering the possibility that all these religious debaters, academics, apologists, and of course the teeming masses of racist, deluded religious cash cows DO NOT ACTUALLY READ THEIR OPPONENTS' BOOKS (hitchens, dawkins, harris, etc.). D'Souza keeps saying the same BS, as do all the creationists, irreducible complexity, life is coincidence, etc. etc. etc. These people have clearly not read ANYTHING about evolution and the OVERWHELMING evidence for it, again and again and again. I am also considering the possibility that they cannot understand digits, so the idea of evolution over billions or millions of years confuses them.
I would go as far to say that not only is religion invalid, but that it is so incredibly contradictory and obviously false, contrived and manipulative on nearly every step that it's comical.
If Ted Haggard can be forgiven and keep preaching his bigotry, and every claim of religion (from medicine to astronomy to consciousness to morality) can be contradicted with TESTABLE hypotheses, the same theories that allow us to use the screens you're using right now, then essentially NOTHING can discredit religion.
What more can be done? How much more damage does religion have to do? How much more money do these charlatans need?
It is unnecessary! Everything good that religion provides can be easily substituted for. Morals, EASY. Any child or logical and moral person will come up with a better moral system. False hope can be replaced with REAL hope. Medicine works, praying does not. If religious authorities' salaries, which are way too high, were donated to research, we could help or cure a massive percentage of ailments. Spiritual appreciation of the world and cosmos can be replaced by real appreciation! Enjoy the intricacy of nature, physics, the beauty of art and the wonder of the human mind and consciousness. Enjoy the wonders of science!
I'm happy to defend any of my statements, or to discuss how I may be incorrect.
Atheism can employ very very simple though experiments to show that the claims of religion are BS.
The burden of proof is on YOU, not us. We're not claiming that we can speak with the creator of the universe and that he went out of his way to make our football team win.
Come on, the Torah/Old Testament says the world was created in seven days. This is not to be 'interpreted'. And it's certainly not literally correct. Why can't people admit they're wrong after thousands of years? Open yourself to logic, consistency, polite discussion and reasonable standards of proof. Stop picking out one section and 'applying' it to abortion, while ignoring ten cruel, malevolent and absurd claims in the same verse....
I will answer any religious argument or statement, or defend any point I have made with simple evidence that non-experts like me can understand, and will also use simple thought experiments. All you have to do is show that your idea is consistent, and not start dodging the question or damning me to hell.
Religious apologists use several tactics: 1) well god loves you even if you don't love him. 2) you're going to hell (cite verse) 3) well how do you explain the intricacy of the human eye (again..) 4) if there's no god then how can you be moral (*bangs head*) 5) other random christian statements ("but jesus died for your sins") 6) atheists are bad! look at... hitler and stalin (*bangs head again*) 7) my personal favorite, a testament to the power of indoctrination. "but the bible says that the bible is true..."
Here is my only reason to support religion! People are bad - without divine punishment, they will lie, steal, cheat, murder, rape - though the religious often do these things anyways, thank GOD we have Christian concepts like forgiveness. Real laws work, jail deters people from murder, in countries where the government and police are effective, of course. So we can't stop thought crime with real laws.
But we can teach real morals instead, and hope that people will do good things for reasons other than their own self-promotion to heaven. Or is it necessary to lie to masses of people so they don't do awful things. Are people really this stupid and immoral? Possibly. Either way, we can just start a new religion that is VERY VERY moral, and discards all the hypocritical, immoral and barbaric concepts written by uneducated cult-leaders.
Oh and God is the why and not the how. Non-overlapping magisteria. Please say any of the 8, or a new one! I'd love to hear.
Almost a decade ago now, when Christopher was been jeered at as "Hitch the Snitch" on account of his betrayal of Sid Blumenthal. The Counterpunch team served up some reminiscences including the following anecdote:
This brings us to Hitchens' snitch psychology, and the years of psychic preparation that launched him into the affidavit against his friend Blumenthal. Like those who question themselves about the imagined future role -- "would I really leap through fire to save my friend", "would I stay silent if threatened with torture" -- Hitchens has, we feel certain, brooded constantly about the conditions under which he might snitch, or inform. A good many years ago we were discussing the German Baader-Meinhof gang, some of whose members were on the run at the time. Hitchens, as is his wont, stirred himself into a grand little typhoon of moral outrage against the gang, whose reckless ultra-leftism was, he said, only doing good to the right. "If one of them came to my front door seeking shelter," Hitchens cried, "I would call the police in an instant and turn him in!" Would you just, we remember thinking at the time. We've often thought about that outburst since, and whether in fact Christopher was at some level already in the snitch business.
Moving on to 2002, we find Hitchens defining Terrorism as part of his campaign to sell the Neocons' "War on Terror", and reaching for Baader-Meinhof as a force bent on pointless killing for the sake of yet more pointless killing:
In the 1970s, Claude Chabrol produced a brilliant film called Nada. It precisely captured both the pointless nastiness and the sinister grandiosity of some of the movements of violence that disfigured that decade. The Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Japan—all gave themselves permission to kill, but without any announced goal or objective beyond more of the same. There were other groups in the same epoch, such as the Basque ETA or the Palestinian "Black September," which used unscrupulous and hateful tactics but whose aims could be understood. Chabrol's title, however, recalled an earlier usage for promiscuous cruelty—nihilism. Terrorism, then, is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.
So now that an powerful action movie that sees the story of Red Army Faction through much the same lens that Hitchens does is doing the rounds, it's no surprise to find him lavish to the point of slavish in his praise. Indeed, in addition to kudos, his article on The Baader Meinhof Complex in the August issue of Vanity Fair is brimming with pop psychology, conspiracy theory and arse-licking support for Establishment-friendly mythologizing as anything he's done in ages.
Recommending that we all go and see "the year's best-made and most counter-romantic action thriller," Hitchens loves The Baader Meinhof Complex with a passion that tolerates no rivals, and he isn't bashful about telling us why.
Unlike earlier depictions of the same events by German directors such as Volker Schlöndorff and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Uli Edel's film interrogates and ultimately indicts (and convicts) the West German terrorists rather than the state and society which they sought to overthrow.
Maybe it's because he's getting conservative in his dotage, but it's interesting that old Hitchy has been singularly unable to indict Leon Trotsky, who was a far more productive and successful mass-murdering terrorist than this German Bonny and Clyde outfit were. To interject a note of reality at this juncture, Philip French writing in The Observer last November gave Complex a favorable review while taking the trouble to point out what was missing from it by comparison with another movie on the same theme—a movie, incidentally, that blows away Hitch's "nihilism" charge:
The careers of Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof inspired one of the finest German pictures of the post-war years, Margarethe von Trotta's The German Sisters (1981), about the lives of the daughters of a stern Protestant minister from the 1950s to the late 1970s. One becomes a tough feminist journalist, weary of extremism, the other, initially dedicated to public service with Albert Schweitzer, abandons her husband and child to train as a terrorist in the Middle East and ends up with the RAF, committing suicide in jail. Anyone seeing The Baader Meinhof Complex should look out for von Trotta's subtle film, but they'll find it a very different experience. The Edel-Eichinger picture is an objective, detached chronicle that takes us through the events of a decade, showing what the terrorists were reacting against, and the brutal, uncomprehending way the authorities responded. The RAF and their sympathisers identified a neo-Nazi tendency in West Germany that gave support to American imperialism in the developing world, the suppression of Palestinians in Israel and the exploitation of the poor everywhere. Fuelled by utopian ideas, impatient with compromise and gradualism, they expressed their impotent fury in calculated acts of violence against real and symbolic targets. In a self-fulfilling prophesy they pushed Germany towards becoming a police state.
Hitchens has a theory (one that he's personally convinced is on the money) about nihilistic guerillas in former axis states, that at runs like this:
There was a prevalent mystique in those days about the Cuban and Vietnamese and Mozambican revolutions, as well as about various vague but supposedly glamorous groups such as the Tupamaros in Uruguay. In the United States, the brief resort to violence by the Black Panthers and then by the Weather Underground was always imagined as an extension of “Third World” struggles onto the territory of imperialist North America. Other spasmodic attempts to raise armed insurrection—the so-called Front for the Liberation of Quebec, the I.R.A., and the Basque eta—were confined to national or ethnic minorities. But there were three officially democratic countries where for several years an actual weaponized and organized group was able to issue a challenge, however garbled and inarticulate, to the very legitimacy of the state. The first such group was the Japanese Red Army, the second (named partly in honor of the first) was West Germany’s Red Army Faction, led by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, and the third was the Red Brigades in Italy.
You may notice that the three countries I have just mentioned were the very ones that made up the Axis during the Second World War. I am personally convinced that this is the main reason the phenomenon took the form it did: the propaganda of the terrorists, on the few occasions when they could be bothered to cobble together a manifesto, showed an almost neurotic need to “resist authority” in a way that their parents’ generation had so terribly failed to do. And this was also a brilliant way of placing the authorities on the defensive and luring them into a moral trap.
Playing Watson to Hitch's Holmes, or perhaps that should be Baldrick to his Blackadder, I too have a theory. And I can sum it up in two words: Operation Gladio. At the mention of this name, readers whose education hasn't been totally neglected will give a knowing wink. The rest of you can Google it or else watch the video at the above link, from which the following intro is taken:
Originally aired on BBC2 in 1992, 'Operation Gladio' reveals 'Gladio', the secret state-sponsored terror network operating in Europe. This BBC series is about a far-right secret army, operated by the CIA and MI6 through NATO, which killed hundreds of innocent Europeans and attempted to blame the deaths on Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades and other left wing groups. Known as 'stay-behinds' these armies were given access to military equipment which was supposed to be used for sabotage after a Soviet invasion. Instead it was used in massacres across mainland Europe as part of a CIA Strategy of Tension. Gladio killing sprees in Belgium and Italy were carried out for the purpose of frightening the national political classes into adopting U.S. policies.
Hitchens has another theory:
Researching this in the late 1970s in Germany, I became convinced that the Baader Meinhof phenomenon actually was a form of psychosis. One of the main recruiting grounds for the gang was an institution at the University of Heidelberg called the Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv, or Socialist Patients Collective, an outfit that sought to persuade the pitifully insane that they needed no treatment save social revolution. (Such a reading of the work of R. D. Laing and others was one of the major “disorders” of the 1960s.) Among the star pupils of this cuckoo’s nest was Ralf Reinders, who was arrested after several violent “actions” and who had once planned to destroy the Jewish House in Berlin—a restoration of the one gutted by the Brownshirts—“in order to get rid of this thing about the Jews that we’ve all had to have since the Nazi time.” Yes, “had to have” is very good. Perhaps such a liberating act, had he brought it off, would have made some of the noises in his head go away.
To which, I can humbly offer Projectiles for the People, which "starts its story in the days following World War II, showing how American imperialism worked hand in glove with the old pro-Nazi ruling class, shaping West Germany into an authoritarian anti-communist bulwark and launching pad for its aggression against Third World nations." This site has plenty of documentation from the other side of the propaganda divide:
For the first time ever in English, this volume presents all of the manifestos and communiqués issued by the RAF between 1970 and 1977, from Andreas Baader’s prison break, through the 1972 May Offensive and the 1975 hostage-taking in Stockholm, to the desperate, and tragic, events of the “German Autumn” of 1977. The RAF’s three main manifestos – The Urban Guerilla Concept, Serve the People, and Black September – are included, as are important interviews with Spiegel and le Monde Diplomatique, and a number of communiqués and court statements explaining their actions.
Providing the background information that readers will require to understand the context in which these events occurred, separate thematic sections deal with the 1976 murder of Ulrike Meinhof in prison, the 1977 Stammheim murders, the extensive use of psychological operations and false-flag attacks to discredit the guerilla, the state’s use of sensory deprivation torture and isolation wings, and the prisoners’ resistance to this, through which they inspired their own supporters and others on the left to take the plunge into revolutionary action.
Drawing on both mainstream and movement sources, this book is intended as a contribution to the comrades of today – and to the comrades of tomorrow – both as testimony to those who struggled before and as an explanation as to how they saw the world, why they made the choices they made, and the price they were made to pay for having done so.
Hitchens has yet another theory:
And lurking behind all this neurotic energy, and not always very far behind at that, is the wish for death and extinction. The last desperate act of the gang—a Götterdämmerung of splatter action, including a botched plane hijacking by sympathetic Palestinians and the murder of a senior German hostage—was the staging of a collective suicide in a Stuttgart jail, with a crude and malicious attempt (echoed by some crude and malicious intellectuals) to make it look as if the German authorities had killed the prisoners.
To which I can suggest an alternative hypothesis, that the German authorities or some other agency, possibly one formerly based at Foggy Bottom, might have had the prisoners killed and made it look like a collective suicide trying to look like a mass murder. I have no idea whether this is what happened, but one thing this suggestion has going for it is that it runs contrary to the Great Contrarian's ponitfications, and that's always a good bet.
“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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