Mainly because Blogger seemed to be having a nervous breakdown over the size of my post, here is a continuation of my brief look at the 'thought' of Sam Harris. To continue quoting from Meera Nanda's article, here she looks at three of his key, most important, political and metaphysical assumptions.
'Here are three of his assumptions, in an increasing order of obfuscation. First here is this nugget, tucked away in the end notes, which celebrates the prospect of (a) revival of (the) occult: Indeed, the future looks like the past… We may live to see the technological perfection of all the visionary strands of traditional mysticism: shamanism, Gnosticism, Kabbalah, Hermetism and its magical Renaissance spawn (Hermeticism) and all the other Byzantine paths whereby man has sought the Other in every guise of its conception. But all these approaches to spirituality are born of a longing for esoteric knowledge and a desire to excavate …the mind –in dreams, in trance, in psychedelic swoon – in search for the sacred” (end note 23, p. 290).
It is hard to believe that the author of this stuff is the most celebrated rationalist of our troubled times.
Secondly, Harris rejects a naturalistic understanding of nature and the human mind......this is nothing but the good old mind-matter holism, the first principle of all New Age beliefs.
Again, the problem is not that Harris holds these beliefs. The problem is that Harris wants to convince us that it is the very height of rationality to hold these beliefs.
Thirdly...Harris believes that spiritual experiences are knowledge experiences, or as he puts it, altered mental states induced by spiritual practices can “uncover genuine facts about the world” (p. 40).... Again, as before, he tries to distance himself from the more extravagant metaphysical schemes. But he buys into the basic idea that what mystics see in their minds actually has an ontological referent in the world outside their minds....'
To put it mildly these are all highly questionable propositions. But this is the context for his main political propositions, which are, essentially, to support George Bush's 'War on Terror'. However, to merely state that is to be grossly unfair...to George Bush. In reality, Harris is far to the Right of Bush: indeed, one has to look to the extremist, armed 'militias' to find people, at least in the United States, as right wing as Harris. Harris has apparently argued that 'some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them'. Not for stating them, mind, or acting on them. For believing them. His views on Islam have been described as 'scientifically baseless, psychologically uninformed, politically naïve, and counterproductive' by Scott Atran, an anthropologist who has actually studied Islam (unlike Harris, who, until recently, had no post-graduate academic qualifications of any sort). When he isn't proposing the existence of ESP or reincarnation, Harris is also supporting the invasion of Iraq, terror bombing of Muslims, and torture. (Harris's 'defence' against the argument that he supports these positions can be found here: since he essentially admits all the charges and makes some more borderline racist/ethnocentric comments in the process, whether it really gets him off the hook is a bit of a moot point).
To repeat, in the United States, Harris is politically at home with extremist militias. In the UK and Europe, on the other hand, he feels most at home amongst fascists.This last position is so right wing that even Christopher Hitchens was driven to murmur that this was slightly 'irresponsible'.
Needless to say, the fact that Harris is, not to put too fine a point on it, a nutter, has not restricted his access to the Western media. Indeed, this enemy of Western science was recently given a fawning interview in New Scientist, where his ramblings about morality (play to your strengths, Sam, why don't you) were indulgently received. But of course to state that the success of a bug eyed right wing loon like Harris (who is, in addition to his other charms, clearly a humourless imbecile) might indicate that something is rotten in contemporary Western culture is of course verboten. But, as we continue to bomb Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen, and new concentration camps and torture chambers are being built by 'us' yearly, and new wars even now are being planned in the Pentagon: perhaps it's something worth thinking about. As Tony Blair might say, (and Christopher Hitchens once did say about Paul Johnson) it's not enough to be tough on Sam Harris.
With the Popinjay apparently soon to pop off this mortal coil, this might be a good time to look at his fellow GnuAtheists, those self-proclaimed apostles (sic) of reason and rationalism. Future episodes will look at the extremely minor academic philosopher Dan Dennett, and maybe Ayaan Hirsi Ali (if I can be bothered) but for now let's look at creepy weirdo Sam Harris (picture of him to the left looking creepy. And weird).
Sam Harris is of course one of the most controversial of the Nooatheists, for his, shall we say, idiosyncratic views on Islam, which few of his fellow atheists have openly condemned, and which some (e.g. Hitchens) would seem to agree with. But before we go onto that, let's look at Harris's basic views: let's see where he's coming from.
To begin with, let's state something that is absolutely obvious: atheists are not necessarily any more rational, or moral, or intelligent, or 'rational', or anything else, than anybody else. And it couldn't be otherwise. All atheists are, are people who don't believe in something. To say that atheists have something in common is like saying that people who don't believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, should band together, maybe form a think tank, or a political movement.
And let's make something even more clear: to be an atheist does not necessarily imply commitment to the scientific method or materialism (something that will become relevant when we come to discussing Harris). To quote Wikipedia: 'Atheism (Sanskrit: nir-īśvara-vāda, lit. "statement of no Lord", "doctrine of godlessness") or disbelief in God or gods has been a historically propounded viewpoint in many of the orthodox and heterodox streams of Hindu philosophies. Generally, atheism is valid in Hinduism, but the path of the atheist is viewed as very difficult to follow in matters of spirituality.'
Assuming one accepts that Hinduism is a religion, this of course means that one can be the follower of an organised religion and an atheist: there is no necessary dichotomy. And Hinduism isn't unique in this. Most Buddhists are atheists. There are Jewish atheists, even Christian atheists (whether or not there are Muslim atheists depends on what you mean by a 'Muslim': there are certainly people who would self-identify as being culturally Muslim who do not believe in God).
Which brings us to Harris. For whatever Dawkins, Myers and others may choose to believe, the simple fact is, Harris is not, and never has been, a scientific materialist. To quote Neera Manda: 'In his much acclaimed The End of Faith, Sam Harris declares the death of faith, only to celebrate the birth of spirituality. He wants to convince us of the proposition that “Mysticism is rational…religion is not” (p. 221). Traditional Judeo-Christian and Islamic conception of God who heeds your prayers is a mere leap of faith, “an epistemological black hole, draining the light out of our world”(p. 35). Faith in a personal God is “intellectually defunct and politically ruinous” (p. 221). It is time to grow up, Harris tells us, and trade faith for spirituality or mysticism, which is “deeply rational, even as it elucidates the limits of reason” (p. 43). Unlike religion, mysticism is only a “natural propensity of the human mind, and we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it” (p. 221)....'
This is an absolutely crucial insight, and helps to explain his view of Islam. Manda continues: 'Brushing aside all political and historical factors that have contributed to religious extremism in the contemporary world, Harris singles out theological beliefs as the primary and pretty much the sole cause of religious violence. He indulgently turns a blind eye on the “spiritual” teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which have a proven track-record of justifying nationalistic wars and ethnic cleansings. Instead, he saves all his venom against the Koran, condemning it as if it were a manual of war.'
One cannot, in other words, separate Harris's view of Islam from his own spiritual views. What are these views? Manda explains: ''This bilious attack on [Islam] only sets the stage for what seems to be his real goal: a defense – nay, a celebration of – Harris’s own Buddhist/Hindu spirituality. (He has been influenced by the esoteric teachings of Dzogchen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta and has spent many years practicing various techniques of meditation, Harris informs his readers). Spirituality is the answer to Islam’s and Christianity’s superstitions and wars, Harris wants to convince us. While he is quick to pour scorn on such childish ideas as the virgin birth, heaven and hell, the great rationalist has only winks and nods to offer when it comes to such “higher” truths as near-death experiences, ESP and the existence of disembodied souls, all of which he finds plausible. Our fearless crusader against faith puts his reason to sleep when it comes to the soul-stuff of the Eastern faith traditions that he himself subscribes to.'
In other words, Harris's hatred for Islam can't be separated from the current political situation in India. India is,amongst other things, an institutionally Islamophobic society, where the sinister BJP party and other right wing Hindu groups have pitted Hindu 'spirituality' against Islamic 'irrationalism' (sound familiar?). Harris has swallowed this line hook line and sinker, and it is his right wing support of the most reactionary aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism that is his real agenda. Given that this is the case, one might infer that Harris is not and could not be genuinely devoted to science, reason and evidence and in fact he is not. On the contrary, his preferred mode of argument is the 'truism', the anecdote and the generalisation. Manda explains: '(Harris is) a Trojan horse for the New Age. While Harris tries to distance himself from the more extravagant Whole Life Expo type fads (crystals, colonic irrigation and the like), he ends up endorsing fundamental New Age assumptions as rational alternatives to traditional religiosity.' (to be continued).
I love listening to Joseph Campbell and I suspect he would have had a great time listening to today's militant atheists and analyzing their myths, motivations and religious views.
Here's Joe on the mythic symbology of release, something we could all do with a bit more of.
And especially for the religion-is-child-abuse fraternity, here's Joe on circumcision, both male and female, African, Aussie Aboriginal and Judaic.
On this recent afternoon, Hitchens said he was not having a terribly good day.
"Chemotherapy isn't good for you," he says. "So when you feel bad, as I am feeling now, you think, 'Well that is a good thing because it's supposed to be poison. If it's making the tumor feel this queasy, then I'm OK with it.' "
So what is a good day for Hitchens?
"A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it," he says. "Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular."
On Beliefs
In his writings about his diagnosis, Hitchens has asserted: "To the dumb question, why me? The cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: 'Why not.' " Hitchens concedes that the dumb question "is bound to occur" — but not for long. He says he decided on his beliefs a long time ago, well before he became ill.
"I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply," he says. "I mean, most human beings who've ever been born would have been dead long before they reached my age. And I would think in most the rest of the world — well, I know it — is still true. So to be relatively healthy at 62 is to be dealt a pretty good hand by the cosmos, which doesn't know I'm here — and won't notice when I'm gone. So that seemed probably the only stoic attitude to take."
On The Rest Of His Life
Hitchens says that as he thinks about the rest of his life, he thinks about the books he'd still like to write, time with his three children — and how he should spend it. And he thinks of the obituaries he'd like to write, listing Robert Mugabe. Joseph Ratzinger. Henry Kissinger.
"It does gash me to think that people like that would outlive me, I have to say," he says. "It really does."
And he mentions other things he'd like to live to see: the end of the Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea, Osama bin Laden on trial, the World Trade Center rebuilt. Hitchens measures his own time, against the world.
Wow, we didn't see this one coming. Amazing! Son of Hitchens joins up with Michael "Squeaky" Weiss to write an article for the Weekly Standard bashing Muslims. Who woulda thunk it? The cry goes out across the Atlantic: earth-shattering report from the Hitchens/Weiss Institute on stands today. Weiss is now calling himself the "Executive Director" of Just Journalism. That's right - they just do journalism. No frills. No advertisements. Just Journalism, folks. The straight dope. Notice how I used an 's' in advertisements. That's because it's a London-based outfit which I guess means pasty faced preppy Weiss is strolling about Piccadilly these days, amusing the locals with his enormous and thrilling charm.
Anyway, here's the piece if you can stomach it. I couldn't read it. Not worth my time anyway. As far as I can tell, it's basically a call to purge British universities of Muslims who don't meet the Weiss-Hitchens standard of approval. Personally, I'd rather be in a classroom with an "Islamist" who has "radical" tendencies than with Mike Weiss any day of the week. Fortunately, I think British universities agree with my lax view, and that's what so annoys these two racist (c'mon, you know it's true) boys posing as Serious Intellectuals.
Photo above of Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens: he looks like he could beat me up
While Christopher continues to sink deeper into his alcohol- and chemotherapy-fueled maelstrom of accelerated senile dementia, the latest result of which is a deluded attempt to blame anyone but himself for the current situation in Iraq, we are fortunate that his younger brother Peter and his old adversary George Galloway still have a least most of their marbles and are quite capable of holding a civil, sensible and adult discussion on a topic of general import. In this case the topic is British prisons, but the two men extend this to include addiction, education and Peter's personal holy cow of personal responsibility. It's nice to listen to two people who disagree about so much politically and yet they are capable of finding a lot of common ground and also of showing each other sincere respect, and this is something you don't often encounter when one of the speakers is Christopher. And this is a major reason why I am so tired of watching, reading or listening to him even on those increasingly rare occasions when he does make sense.
Peter hears of my good wishes on his birthday. He suspects a plot.
Incidentally, it must have escaped Greywolf's notice that I have championed Peter's work on this blog and have no objection whatsoever to good work being claimed as such. Although opinions are subjective, here's one of mine from the archives:
"Peter Hitchens said the single most important thing at that conference - that Cameron should offer a way out of Europe"
David Cameron is in Brussels now.
Osborne announced 'cuts' of £81bn over the next 5 yrs. We pay the EU £45m a day. Over 5 yrs that equals £82 billion. That's without the increase in our contributions recently announced under the ConDem government. Vodaphone has been 'let off' a £6bn tax bill. Almost the entire amount saved in cuts to welfare in the UK. Why? Can you imagine a private person being 'let off' their tax bill? The ConDem cuts have clearly targetted the poor more than any other group. Is this sensible fiscal management or more social engineering?
I championed Peter's recent Mail on Sunday column elsewhere. You can read the whole column, and comments, on the MoS website, here. One of the important points made in the piece is:
"while Labour spent £600 billion (roughly £10,000 for every human being in this country) in their last year in office, the supposedly vicious cutter George Osborne plans to spend £692.7 billion (£11,500 per head) in 2014-15"
Happily for Peter, poor single parents and those most in need are seeing a decrease in housing benefit. They don't know how they will keep a roof over their childrens' heads.
What we are waiting for are the events after Cameron's visit. The Conservative party have given nods of reassurance towards a referendum but slime their way through any real commitment. Quite the opposite. It seems that every event will be deemed something not requiring a referendum (like a new treaty giving Brussels more power). Which is a bit like the rich saying they would have fed Lazerous if they thought he was really hungry but he never was.
"Eurocrats have responded to the financial crisis with a massive power grab which will affect Britain regardless of whether or not we join the euro. Westminster MPs are will soon be asked to approve plans for Brussels surveillance of national budgets. The City of London will be severely disadvantaged by the EU’s new financial regulators"
The City of London matters to Britain. It is important. Hannan goes on to say:
"Denying Britain a Euro-referendum a second time would degrade people’s confidence in our democratic institutions"
And this is something Peter Hitchens is good at - drawing attention to the freedoms we have and that we might lose them by stealth. He champions freedom and liberty (although not always on an individual basis *ahem*) and I think the ConDems are a gift. I mean, you just can't make it up! I read recently that the changes the ConDems have made to Child Benefit are unenforceable. How true that is I don't know but what a fiasco changes to Child Benefit were. If ever a journalist was looking for something to write about, the ConDem government is a gift that keeps on giving.
Freedom is important. The freedom to sit in disgusting housing alone, with the amount of money the government has decided you need to live on is not quite the same thing as independance. The fear of losing your precious child to the state because some asshole with a psychology degree says he needs drugs and you just won't roll over and say 'Yes Sir!' is not a benefit of freedom. It's a 'benefit' of an authoritarian state.
Freedom is important. And I will walk in London and Oxford and wherever I bloody well please. Because being bullied is wrong, especially in a 'free' society. But I can't wear a badge in the Socpa zone protesting anything, without permission. How free are you? Really? Or are we all caged in some human zoo, "Fat and safe and dull and lazy like some cow in a milking machine" ('Joy Adamson' - Born Free) What we need from those in authority is more freedom, not less.
On this day, dear readers, I wish you freedom. I insist upon it. And a happy birthday to Peter Hitchens. May he strive to make us all free, except from our love of God and our fellow man.
(Note: the picture of Peter is hot-linked to a rather lovely little something)
In the last Presidential campaign, tweaking liberals appalled by the John McCain's Vice Presidential pick, Christopher Hitchens wrote their reaction was "like nothing I have heard since the nomination of Clarence Thomas." Ha Ha. Get it? Those liberals are the real bigots, and will go against blacks and women when it suits them! This was, we should note, in a piece endorsing the by then shoe-in candidacy of Obama, a few weeks after Hitchens was making cracks about him not really being black, or black enough, or something.
That Hitchens was still peddling this reverse discrimination gruel in 2008 does illustrate how dogged Hitchens has been in his service of the Republican Party, a point nicely underlined by the recent flair up of the old Thomas confirmation case- first by apology demand from Thomas's nut job wife, and then the statement of Thomas's old girlfriend Linda McEwen underlying what was obvious at the time: Thomas had lied his way onto the Supreme Court, under oath.
Funny our Hitch is ignoring this story. Where's the defender of that great literary light Andrea Dworkin? Where the man who championed the rape case of Jaanita Broaddrick, brashly decrying those who would ask for evidence in support of the tall tale? Opps, well, Dworkin portrayed liberal men as basically rapists and Broaddrick accused Bill Clinton. The goods were right there on Clarence Thomas at the time, reporters went to the video store and nailed the Porno Hound Justice even as the Republicans were ramming his nomination through Congress. Since then, Thomas, the Court's most reliable servant of corporate power and capital punishment, has lowered the standards of the Institution in every way, accepting a million and a half book advance from Rupert Murdoch.
All of which has drawn not and unkind word from Mr. Hitchens, it's just nothing he and Hugh Hewitt ever got to. It should, however, raise some serious doubts on Hitchens, that big fan of Shelby Steele, and his credibility on racial issues in general. For while Thomas, a national disgrace, still stands on the Supreme Court, the era of high tech Uncle Tomism he personifies seems to have come to an end. The now tattered reverse discrimination card was played for a time with cruel relish, and most of the time Hitchens was there to double down. During the Clinton Impeachment Hitchens told Marc Cooper that, seeing the principled behavior of Lindsey Graham, he could never really think ill of those southern politicians again, such was their true noble form. It would still be a few years before Hitch endorsed Bush's reelection, at last fully joined to The Party of the Southern Strategy.
Is Hitch, overall, good for the world? The question is debatable. For the nays, I would open that he's a waste of space who has spent the last decade as an intellectual fig leaf for some of the most nakedly ambitious machiavellians we've seen in the west in a long time. And if you're of a Green disposition, you should be ashamed not to be aghast at how he has squandered a Central Park's worth of wood pulp and a million air miles on his various trivial pursuits. There IS no debate. I rest my case.
In the autumn of last year, Christopher and his fellow jovial card-carrying atheist chummy Stephen Fry took part in the Intelligence Squared debate in London speaking against the motion that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. Speaking in favor of the motion were, unsurprisingly, two card-carrying Catholics, Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe.
The Archbishop began the proceedings by proving, quite conclusively in my book, that the Catholic Church really is a force for good in the world. Moreover, he was able to do so statistically by revealing that while Catholics make up only 17 percent of the world's population, they account for 25 percent of all the aid to the poor and starving, which they dish out to anyone in need, even undeserving atheists. Another telling point is that while the Church has erred on more than one occasion over the past two millennia, its leadership of late has been big enough to own up to its faults. Perhaps the Crusades were a bit over the top and the techniques and style of the Spanish Inquisition were a bit too Gothic for modern tastes. Also the zeal with which the native Latin Americans were converted to Catholicism and Latin and left bereft of their golden nicknacks does leave something to b desired. (Although as these were religious nicknacks, I don't see how someone who thinks it poisons everything can see their confiscation and destruction as a bad thing.) Still, look at all the souls that were saved, the cathedrals built and the art that was created, treasured and preserved thanks to the existence of the Catholic Church. Indeed, had it not existed and stood firm in the Middle Ages, we'd all be praying to Allah five times a day in Arabic by now.
All this wisdom, reason and common sense was, of course, lost on Christopher, who replied to the Bish from 8 minutes into the above clip and continued in the one below. He had the audacity, nay, the temerity, to disagree with His Grace. He decided to play the collective guilt gambit — the very same strategy employed by amateur and professional victims and shakedown artists of all stripes from street-corner gangsters claiming you've spilt beer on their spats, to nation states inventing or inflating past aggressions for present-day advantage, to aging parents in nursing homes complaining their children have abandoned them. He even went so far as to criticize the Church for "the evasive and euphemistic form that [these apologies] take." This is a bit rich coming from somebody who has never made a sincere apology in his life and who has played a personal role in some of the most vile skulduggery of the century so far in serving as a poster boy for the War on Terra.
While condemning the Catholic Crusades of the Middle Ages, he's gung ho behind the contemporary Crusades of the Bush and Obama regimes, and while he roundly condemns the Catholic Church's treatment of the Native Americans of Latin America after the Spanish and Portuguese conquests, he is also on record as approving of the removal of Native Americans from most of the territory of the continental USA, a project that combined hefty dollops of genocide and ethnic cleansing — but that was in such a good cause, of course.
And naturally, all good Catholics, in keeping with their savior's teaching, have forgiven Christopher his sins and turned a collective cheek at his cheekiness. But if the Lord Almighty, in witnessing the scene and being displeased with the ends to which his own dear prodigal son was employing the talents that he had been invested with, has seen fit to show his disappointment at Christopher by smiting him with cancer of the gullet, it would make perfect sense from a Biblical perspective. It is greatly to the credit of the Catholic Church and its adherents that no official claim has been made harping over what their God has done to the blasphemer. Had it been His Holiness the Pope so fatally stricken and the Popinjay spared and in chirpy good health, one can well imagine the tune he would be singing.
Sonia Verma of the Globe and Mail has visited the DC apartment to bathe in the essence and add a little more to the mystique of the the man called Hitch. As well as giving us a good look at the flat, the family and the lifestyle, her somber and beautifully crafted report, filed on October 22, also serves as a timely update on Christopher's current state of ill-health, which is continuing to deteriorate.
For him, the “lovely light” is already gone. He used the phrase to describe a heightened state of illumination he was able to achieve by burning the candle at both ends.
However, the smoking and drinking that once served to fuel his creative and intellectual life have now conspired against him, striking him with stage 4 cancer of the esophagus, for which, he admits “the numbers are not good.”
Now, at the age of 61, the prominent atheist, author and journalist is suddenly staring death in the face.
His illness, he maintains, has not altered his lifelong view that God does not exist. “Why would it?” he asks. “Religion,” he says, “is made up by a primate species which is one step evolved from the chimpanzee, and it shows,” a version of some line he has used before.
But virtually everything else in his life has changed. Even though it would be nice to imagine Mr. Hitchens as able to defy the gruelling effects of weekly sessions of chemotherapy, to somehow cheat the debilitating nausea, exhaustion and anemia, and soldier on with his life's work, the truth is, he cannot.
Since beginning chemotherapy treatment six weeks ago, he has lost 30 pounds, so that his clothes billow around him. On those days that he does manage to get out of bed, it's not until 11. His skin is sallow and riddled with sores. After our drink, he will eat takeout pizza with his daughter, Antonia, and retire to bed.
“Because I am so prone to exhaustion, I can't do more than what I would have once called social drinking. I can't smoke like I used to and I don't want to. I mean, the desire just isn't there,” he said.
That was a bit of a low blow against my cousin the chimpanzee, as Richard Dawkins calls him. For a start, none of my chimp acquaintances are the least bit religious and there's not a deist, let alone a theist, among them. Furthermore, as I'm sure Dr. Dawkins can confirm, humans did not evolve from chimps; the two species are considered to share a common ancestor from which they both began to diverge some time around five million years ago, which was well before humans became humans and chimps became chimps. And lastly, describing humans as one step evolved from the chimpanzee could be construed as implying that Homo sapiens is more highly evolved than Pan troglodytes, which besides being blatantly speciesist is also manifestly not the case, as anyone who has tried to arm-wrestle a chimp over a bunch of bananas would quickly find out to their cost.
Currently dying at an accelerated pace due to chemotherapy, Christopher has been honored by no less a newspaper than the Guardian, which has seen fit to give him their magazine commentator award for sharing the intimate details of his personal health situation with the world in the pages of Vanity Fair.(Well, it's been a slack year for the glossies.) While he has to share the honors with Simon Jenkins, who took the commentariat of the year award and Johann Hari who had best environmental commentator thrust upon him, Hitch can at least take some comfort that his impending death will not have been entirely in vain. A gong from the Guardian! Gosh! And besides the gratuity, there'll probably be something nice and shiny for him to plonk down on the mantlepiece. You gotta hand it to the Hitch. How many of us are fortunate enough to be able to make a killing out of dying?
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Hitchwatching is good for your health, but which Hitch is best?
Hitchwatching is good for your health, according to the experts. Keeping an eye on Christopher "the Preening Popinjay" Hitchens" on a daily basis appears to cut your risk of heart disease by more than one-third, researchers have found.
"It's basically a good news story for those who like watching the contrarian Christophobe," said lead researcher Verity Von Strangehobby. "These watchings appear to offer benefits for the heart without raising the risk of dying from anything else."
The study appeared in Arterial, Venal, Capillary and Vascular Vivisection, a journal of the Armenian Heart Association.
Researchers followed 40,000 healthy Hitchwatchers for 13 years, then compared rates of heart disease with consumption of Hitch-related media materials including books, articles, videos, photographs and drawings. They found that participants who consumed between three and six servings of the mellow-flavored, sticky and pungent extra-bitter Popinjay per day were 45 percent less likely to die from heart disease than those who indulged less than once a day.
Consuming yet larger amounts of Hitch was also protective against death from heart disease, but not as strongly. People who consumed more than six servings a day reduced their risk by 36 percent compared with the low Hitchwatching group, while those who consumed between two and four cups of the lighter and weaker Peter "Bonkers" Hitchens daily reduced their risk by 20 percent compared with those who consumed either more or less Bonkers. There was no measurable reduction in risk for those consuming the immature, flaky and unsmoked Alex Meleagrou Hitchens. These effects remained after researchers adjusted for other heart disease risk factors, such as smoking, watching Glen Beck and exercise level.
Neither Popinjay or Bonkers consumption appeared to affect the risk of dying from any other cause, including stroke or cancer.
The study did not include people already suffering from heart disease, so its results cannot be generalized to such high-risk populations.
"But for healthy people, it appears that watching either Christopher, Peter or Alex Hitchens is not harmful and it may even offer some benefits," Dr, Von Strangehobby said.
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Hitchens Makes Numerous Errors In His Geostrategic Analysis. And I Hear He Drinks.
That thug Chris Hitchens, who these days with his shiny chrome dome, relentlessly evil and megalomaniacal pronouncements, and a peculiarly ironic illness, would be well cast as a Bond villain in the next 007 flick, sat down last month with two "distinguished" thinkers, George Packer and Peter Beinart, for a substantive critique and discussion of the initial years of President Barack Hussein Obama's foreign policy. With these two lapsed Eustonians joining Chris it was quite the rogues' gallery assembled, and one which presented us Hitchhunters with a revealing line-up of his latest criminal intrigues and villainous views.
Right away His Hitchness is not pleased with the mushiness and lack of "theme" in Barry O's overseas contingency operations. Poor Chris pines for those halcyon Dubya days, when America was practically open in how it was waging a race war against Arabs under a flimsy pretext of anti-Islamism. Lamentably, there's no more "crusade," as Chris wistfully notes.
Why, our Popinjay then inquires and invites us to ponder, is Iran not in the "family of nations?" Simple, because "it is an Islamic republic." Now of course it's almost unnecessary to point out how this shopworn boilerplate is plainly wrong and not the real reason why Iran is excluded from the so-called international community. For one, there are Islamic nations that have had familial relations for decades with the US, nations that are more extreme, oppressive, and more of an exporter of militant Islam than Iran, namely Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan. But even Hitchens' presuppositions here are patently false. Most countries in the world, including the Non-Aligned Movement that by itself represents the majority of member states of the United Nations, formally recognize and support Iran's right to enrich uranium and to have a nuclear program. The Security Council may have passed a new round of sanctions against Tehran, but only because of America's insistence in dragging Russia, China, and others, kicking and screaming into some reluctant acquiescence of them. And recall that Security Council Resolution 1929 in fact supported Iran's right to enrich uranium, as it reiterated Iran's prerogative to do so as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The resolution was reprimanding Iran for not adequately cooperating with the IAEA, not because they have a nuclear program per se. Brazil, who voted against the resolution, is much more reflective of the international community, world opinion, and the General Assembly. Unsurprisingly, Hitchens doesn't even bother to provide a scintilla of serious evidence that Iran is actually seeking to obtain nuclear weapons, and not merely, far more plausibly, attempting to achieve "breakout capacity" as a deterrent to US-Israeli aggression. No doubt seeking breakout capacity in self-defense is not in the spirit of the NPT and nonproliferation, but nevertheless this is quite distinct from what Hitchens alleges.
The Big H asserts that Iran has been engaged in all sorts of aggression throughout the world. Now it's usually pointed out by my Comrades on the Hard Left that Iran has not invaded another country for centuries, but that's not quite accurate, and I have to agree with Hitch here for once, even if he doesn't mention the most salient and odious example of recent Iranian imperialism. Yes, it is a fact that Iran has been involved in a heinous act of aggression in the recent past, one of the worst atrocities and crimes of the 21st century. Namely, they played a crucial role in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, providing critical support to the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (known for ideological reasons in the West under the drab sobriquet "the Northern Alliance"), and even directly used their military forces, in this case a special unit of the Revolutionary Guard, to fight alongside the Americans and subdue the Afghan town of Herat.
And of course we're treated once again to Hitchens' literally batshit-insane call to bomb Iran before they might obtain the bomb. "If there is going to be a confrontation with Iran... the timing should be decided not by them, the pretext for it should be decided not by them, and it would be better done when they're not ready rather than when they were" as he coyly puts it. It's so crazy that even Packer, for once in his worthless life, manages to say something sensible and point out how a feckless and foolish attack on Persia would be an enormous gift to the Mullahs, and devastate the Green Movement. Apparently Iran with the bomb would be free to annex Bahrain, and commit all sorts of other shenanigans with pure impunity, but this again is specious and misleading. The US would be delighted to see Iran become brazen and nakedly expansionist as this would finally allow them to tighten the noose around Persia's neck with some credibility, isolate them internationally, and turn the Sunni Arabs against them. Plus the US could still retaliate against the provocations of a nuclearized Iran through proxy forces, like they did against the much more dangerous and powerful USSR for decades during the Cold War. Another reason why we don't need to invade Iran even if they get nukes is the case of Pakistan. A crazed, millenarian and Islamist regime under General Zia-ul-Haqcovertly and illegally enriched uranium to weapons grade levels during the 80s. No one argued that we should have invaded or attacked Pakistan for this, even though Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq was much worse than the Iranians today. For all that Iran is accused of, they are not forming an international jihadist movement and mujahideen which will morph into the Taliban and Al-Qaeda like Pakistan did, neither would they be able to get away in their wildest dreams with anything remotely like the AQ Khan network. Nor would Iran likely use the weapon (as Hitchens concedes, they'd be incinerated by the West), whereas Pakistan has come very close to firing it at India. The tensions between India and Pakistan are the most dangerous in the world today, as this is most likely the place where a nuclear conflagration would occur if one does, as most experts agree. So of course Hitchens is adamantly demanding that we exacerbate these tensions and increase the risk of nuclear war by having India encircle Pakistan by placing its forces in Afghanistan, making Islamabad feel even more threatened, nervous, and subsequently irrational, as the US abandons its support of them and embraces their archnemesis as per Crazy Chris' dubious prescriptions. Incidentally, why isn't Hitchens frothing at the mouth about how India has been developing their nuclear weapons program (with the hypocritical support of Obama even in the aftermath of his pious Prague Speech)? Funny how Hitch neglects to mention that when grandstanding on the topic of nuclear proliferation.
Thank Allah that lunatics like Hitchens don't actually have any influence or control over US foreign policy, or we'd all be doomed.
Of course there's plenty more in the full video to debunk, a "target rich" environment as it's called, but this will do for now.
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A poorly informed zealot, dogmatically peddling an absolute standard of truth based on his own personal philosophy
Yes indeedy...A poorly informed zealot, dogmatically peddling an absolute standard of truth based on his own personal philosophy. That's the verdict on the venerable Hitch from Miguel A. Guanipa at American Thinker. In addition to playing an academic character assassin of the old school to perfection, Miguel appears to be more concerned about the soul of the Hitch than the Hitch is himself.
Curiously enough, as he becomes stoically intimate with his future untimely demise, Hitchens cites the prospect of not being around to read eulogies to his legacy as one of his regrets. His positively wretched state of health may deter some from coldly labeling him a supremely self-centered man. But it would be more accurate to say that Hitchens -- like most of his fellow skeptics -- is guilty only of having a set of terribly disordered priorities.
Hitchens' voluntary ousting of God from the picture is fitting for a man who appears not the least bit troubled about an imminent rendezvous with his maker, but instead is fastidiously concerned about the proper handling of his domestic affairs pending his exit from the land of the living. There is, in short, no crossroads urgency in his exquisitely tortured mind at this decisive time in his life -- perhaps prolonged for his own eternal benefit -- to dare venture beyond the strict boundary of Naturalism.
But the hermetically sealed intellectual boundary, impervious to any belief in the supernatural, which Hitchens unapologetically accepts as conclusive betrays a gnawing inconsistency within the existential paradigm of this brilliant and presumably open-minded skeptic.
I don't share Miguel's concerns about the Hitch's predicament, as the Creator may well be capricious or ironic enough to give this tortured soul a free ticket to the Gardens of Paradise based on the omniscient understanding that the blighter prefers the Fleshpots of Hades. However, Miguel is correct in pointing out that Hitch's reasons for not being a believer are dodgy to say the least.
Moreover, Hitchens by no means adopted this self-imposed limitation because of his expansive knowledge of the central tenets of any religion -- a fact made evident by his naive exposition of the concept of eternity as being forced to stay at a perpetual party against one's wishes -- but rather because of his latent hostility toward all of them. And even more surprising is that he cherishes the roots of this conviction as a most liberating epiphany.
By his own admission, the catalyst that spurred his adoption of this hyper-skeptical stance and eventually led him to "shed any delusions about the cosmos" was a growing resentment for religious authority figures in the Anglican boarding school he attended as a youth, who tended to misuse religion as a "weapon of authority" but had "no special claim to be in charge." Eventually, Hitchens saw himself as being freed from under this tyrannical regime, and he has since devoted most of his life to fighting religion in general, and Christianity in particular, which he derisively refers to -- borrowing a William Blake metaphor -- as the "mind-forged manacles" of superstition.
One wonders, from whom other than himself would Hitchens accept the caveat that not all religious expressions are a form of intellectual totalitarianism, and that he may be woefully wrong in his assumptions?
When the great man is caught in the bathhouse with his toga half down on the ides of March, you'd expect him to be slashed and stabbed by daggers of former friends such as Cockburnus, Vidalius, Chomskius and that she-wolf Kathia Politia. But surely not Ericus Altermanius!?!? I would have thought that he, at least, was an honorable man. But alas, Eric has elected to spill the beans on, if not the blood of, his former friend and comrade Christophius Ericus Judas Hitchius. It only goes to prove that once you've crossed the Rubicon, you can never go back, and when they stab you in it they always claim they are doing it for The Nation, as if there was any decorum left at that forum.
HAS THERE ever been anyone quite like Christopher Hitchens? As a writer and a thinker, Hitchens may be the greatest performance artist the profession has ever produced. He is Oscar Wilde without the plays; Gore Vidal without the novels; Edmund Wilson without the ideas; George Orwell without the integrity; and Richard Burton without the movies (and Elizabeth Taylor). What he is not, however, is the author of lasting works of reportage, criticism, philosophy, or, dare I say it, literature.
And if that isn't far enough below the belt for you, get a load of this.
DURING THE past decade, Hitchens has become a bona-fide American celebrity. He may be the only self-described Trotskyist to be so and certainly its most beloved atheistic ideologue. Tellingly, however, the moment that sent Hitchens into the thin-aired atmosphere he now occupies, where taxi drivers and transit workers recognize him across the country and much of the English-speaking world, was his decision to turn on his close friend and then presidential adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, and accuse him to congressional impeachment investigators of deliberately lying about Monica Lewinsky for the purposes of planting a story about her alleged “stalking” of the president.
I do not exaggerate when I say that pretty much everything about the incident came as a shock to the people who knew Hitchens well. The notion that he would use the casual bullshitting one so often heard (over drinks) at the table—often exaggerated and shocking for the purposes of the joy of the frisson itself—against a close friend in a public forum was only slightly less disconcerting—and far less easily explicable—than his apparent eagerness to empower the dangerously reactionary forces that lay behind the Republican Congress’s impeachment expedition. After all, some of the things Hitchens would himself say at the time, most disturbingly his lengthy and passionate defenses of Holocaust denier David Irving, were far more disturbing and shocking than anything he attributed to Blumenthal. And it was understood that such things were said under a cloak of honorary omerta that one would never breach in public. (Indeed, I can still recall with considerable shock some of the never-to be-repeated things Hitchens said to me during that first afternoon drinking binge.) Hitchens, meanwhile, went on Meet the Press—evidence of his new standing in the world—claiming that he would face jail rather than agree to testify in perjury proceedings against his new ex-friend. He had volunteered the information, he insisted, to get at Clinton, not at Blumenthal.
The explanation was only partially credible. True, Hitchens had an obsessive hatred for Bill Clinton. “My dislike for him stemmed from his discrediting of something precious to me: the alliance between the anti-war and civil rights movements of which he’d been a vestigial member in the 1960s, and which was my formative politics,” he told Alexander Linklater, author of a brilliant profile of Hitchens in the British magazine Prospect. “The way he cashed that in, lied about whether he was a draft-dodger; the way he smarmily pretended to be more in favour of civil rights than he had been at the time, the way he cheapened everything. He was nothing but a cynical, self-seeking, ambitious thug, and the realisation that this would be the closest that my class of ‘68 would get to the top job gave me a terrible sickening feeling.”
Hitchens’s explanation for his Clinton hatred—and his willingness to betray his friend and make common cause with some of the most distasteful elements of American politics—is, like pretty much everything about the man, sui generis. But it is also intellectually unsatisfying. I mean, sure Clinton had unattractive qualities in abundance. But since when do intellectuals admit to making political choices purely on the basis of personalities? By ceaselessly attacking Clinton’s character, Hitchens was empowering a group of theocrats, corporate profiteers, and nativist know-nothings who were poised not only to frustrate what remained of the Democrats’ progressive agenda—and as it happens, we’ve rarely heard a more progressive agenda for the country outlined by a president than Clinton did during the initial Monica-related hysterics in his 1998 State of the Union address—but also invited the takeover of the levers of political and economic power by the Republicans’ right-wing overclass constituencies. Indeed, on the one issue that appeared to excite Hitchens during the 1990s—intervention in the Balkans—Clinton and the Democrats pushed through the aggressive U.S. response over the endless objections of the very Republicans with whom he was now so eager to associate himself.
But to take any of Hitchens’s positions on policy issues is to miss the point of the man. His talent is for the performance; let lesser minds sort out the various contradictions. His turncoat performance during the impeachment hearings both made him a star and eased his transition into the highly remunerative world of right-wing speechifying, where he is sometimes joined by the likes of Ann Coulter or David Horowitz in denouncing those who continued to say and believe what he had said and believed until a few months earlier. The fact that he does so on occasion in lurid, McCarthyite language that he could not possibly defend on merits of the positions taken by those liberals he so relentlessly and carelessly attacks only increases his celebrity quotient in the Fox News/talk-radio-driven political culture.
I relate all this not only because of its intrinsic interest, but because, while it is, I believe, unarguably the fulcrum point in the making of the celebrity we now know as “Christopher Hitchens,” it receives no discussion whatever in this 448-page memoir. (The galleys sent out to reviewers did not contain the words “Sidney Blumenthal.” In the final book, they appear in a photo caption, though not of Blumenthal.)
Gaza is a land of contrasts, reports Peter Hitchens, who's just been there and done that, along with a sojourn in the West Bank for good measure, although I don't know if he bought the tee-shirt. He'll probably be spat at by big mouths on all sides for writing this and I'll get poked in both eyes by Philippa for giving him my magnanimous approbation, but I think he's done an useful piece of reportage here.
It is lunchtime in the world's biggest prison camp, and I am enjoying a rather good caffe latte in an elegant beachfront cafe. Later I will visit the sparkling new Gaza Mall, and then eat an excellent beef stroganoff in an elegant restaurant.
Perhaps it is callous of me to be so self-indulgent, but I think I at least deserve the coffee. I would be having a stiff drink instead, if only the ultra-Islamic regime hadn't banned alcohol with a harsh and heavy hand.....
If you're thinking this report is just another piece of not-so-subtle pro-Zionist Islam-bashing crud put out to try to ameliorate the ongoing rage of anti-Israel sentiment, just imagine how much nastier it would have read if Christopher had penned it. (Although there's a fat chance that he would have ever willingly entered a booze-free zone under any circumstances.) Well done Peter for trying to produce an account of life in today's Palestine that is more than a cartoon sketch.
Meanwhile far away in another part of town, the IDF have been accused of shooting Arab children down. This is obviously a job for Christopher to look into, as he has made it something of a crusade to speak out against child abuse by theocratic thugs. I wonder if it will get aired in next week's Slate.
Whoever you re and whatever your religious views, what better way to start the week than with a Hitch Fix.
Personally, I'll never forgive Christopher for his appearance with the rabbi at 13;00 when he was talking about the clitoris. I mean, how could he have worn white socks with black pants and shoes? And why didn't the stylists put a stop to it?
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Does Hitchens still back the "Horribly Corrupt" American University of Iraq?
A couple of years ago, in a "small" attempt to rationalize the war in Iraq, Hitchens scolded the left by bragging about a great new American University of Iraq (AUIS) that was supposedly doing a bunch of good things over there. To help "build democracy" via this institution, Hitch encouraged Slate readers to send books to the apparently poor place. And many of the suckers did; I know because I ended up teaching at AUIS a few months after his column appeared.
Pictured: Our Man in Iraq - John Agresto, combat ready for the war of freedom
In his column, passing along a series of fictions no doubt reproduced via email, Hitchens wrote:
Among the projects already underway are an M.B.A. program in concert with Hochschule Furtwangen University in Germany and an English preparatory program run jointly with the American English Institute at the University of Oregon. An environmental-studies department is envisioned, with money from the government of Italy, to address the recuperation of Iraq's southern marshes, the largest wetlands in the region, which were subjected to deliberate destruction by the regime of Saddam Hussein. The University of Vermont is hosting videoconferencing sessions in political science on such topics as federalism and church-state separation.
Sounds nice, doesn't mean anything. None of that stuff exists. The truth is, AUIS is a racket and a front for US and neocon propaganda, which is, I guess, precisely why Hitchens is a fan. I already filed my report/expose on the shithole last year (with Counterpunch), which was discussed on this site at the time. There were some skeptics out there, however, who didn't quite believe me (like Capt. Seamus Quinn, Hitch lover, wog hater). This post is for them.
All the claims AUIS made had the same stagey, silly feel, a boastful absurdity typical of the US in Iraq. The claims made for our mission were ridiculous; we were supposed to be transforming Iraq’s culture, teaching its future leaders a new and democratic way of thinking. But the university had only 200-odd students, and was straining to accommodate that number. It was hard to see how a group this size would transform a country of more than 26 million people...
Dolan takes aim at many targets, and he particularly has it out for the ringleader John Agresto. With style and effect, Dolan describes AUIS's beginnings, then elaborates on Agresto:
AUIS bloomed in the Northern Iraqi desert, a very artificial growth sustained hydroponically with US tax dollars. One night, at a very boozy faculty party, some veteran AUIS teachers told us the secret story of how the place was created .They claimed that AUIS was born when John Agresto, a right-wing academic and vassal of the Cheney clan, drove over the Turkish border with $500,000 cash taped to his body. There was something grotesque about this legend, because Agresto is a notably fat man, and once you’d heard the legend of his cash-strapped trip across the border, you couldn’t help imagining him bulging with cash on top of his other bulges, like a wombat infested with botfly larvae.
...Agresto has a very typical right-wing biography, steeped in resentment and nourishing long, slow, vengeful designs on the academic profession which had humiliated him. He was a Reagan appointee to the National Endowment for the Humanities in the mid-1980s, joining his patron, Bill Bennett, in the project to de-fund the Left. But when he was nominated as Deputy head, a job that required congressional confirmation, Agresto was bitterly humiliated. He was criticized as a “mediocre political appointment” by the American Studies Association, with a dozen academic organizations joining up to issue a statement deploring his “decidedly partisan reputation.” There were also raised evebrows at the fact that a witness who testified for Agresto at his confirmation hearings had recently been given a large grant at Agresto’s behest. After these bruising revelations, his nomination was dropped.
Humiliation was the theme of all Agresto’s memories of venturing into the wider world, beyond the tiny enclave of neocon academics. Even his ideological allies seemed to hurt him; he once described Lynne Cheney, his boss at the NEH, as “gruff and manly,” then repeated with real hatred in his voice, “Gruff…she was gruff.”
Dolan, by the way, was fired this past summer after Agresto 'discovered' a five-year old eXile article written by Dolan that satirically attacked pro-Iraqi War cheerleaders, one such cheerleader being Christopher Hitchens. Dolan compared certain pundit warmongers to Zombies and put together special "Extinction Packages" for each zombie (pro-war cheerleader). For Hitchens, he wrote:
ZOMBIE #7: Christopher Hitchens
Quote: "So it turns out that all the slogans of the anti-war movement were right after all. And their demands were just. "No War on Iraq," they said - and there wasn't a war on Iraq. Indeed, there was barely a "war" at all...."Stop the War" was the call. And the "war" is indeed stopping. That's not such a bad record."
--Christopher Hitchens, April 9, 2003, Slate.com
Extinction Package: We've got to get Hitchens to the Sunni Triangle ASAP! Those poor GIs and Iraqis have been living a lie, killing and dying in a war that never happened! All it should take is a bullhorn and a two-liter bottle of gin - the bullhorn so Hitchens can walk the streets of Falluja and Ramadi telling everybody the good news that there's no war, and the gin bottle because - well, frankly, he says he won't come out of his room without it. And he may need the bottle to console him as he goes about his job enlightening the deluded, because there may be resistance to his clearheaded view.
So, Dolan was sacked for writing something that Agresto thought was politically insensitive, according to Agresto. The irony here is that during the 90's, Agresto made somewhat of a name for himself by loudly denouncing political correctness on college campuses. After detailing Agresto's hypocrisy and the sheer absurdity of the situation, Dolan concludes:
I know one thing: the next time some rightwinger starts mouthing off to me about “Liberal PC” or “leftwing censorship,” I’m going to spit in his face.
Of course, the real reason Dolan was fired was because he insulted Agresto's neocon patrons.
It's kind of interesting that I'm having a hard time finding a picture of this "university" online. They seem to be deliberately evading any show of themselves. They have these phony "research centers" on their website like the Twin Rivers Institute which is supposed to be some sort of bastion of science and research in the Waterworld. There used to be fake pictures of the place on the AUIS site, but they're gone now. Oh well. I'll just give you Agresto - ready for combat - instead.
When Hitch met Tariq Ramadan the other day, the Swiss philosopher and theologian was as gentlemanly and scholarly as could be. Despite him speaking English as a foreign language he enunciated very clearly, pleasantly and beautifully, making his words a joy to listen to. Then, when Christopher's turn came, the contrast was striking. The boring old battleaxe did his very best impression of Humpty Dumpty, totally ignoring the points Ramadan was making, going on and on about the Rushdie fatawa while remaining completely oblivious to the fact that he gives far better fatwa himself than he gives talking head, and finishing on that old cannard that no matter how often it flaps its wings, just won't fly because it hasn't got a single tail feather and so it is forced to walk like an islamaphobe and quack like an islamaphobe:
Some people say that Islamists give themselves permission to lie to non-believers. It sounds like the sort of vulgar paranoid thing that an Islamaphobe would say, doesn't it? It's very easy to disprove. Except that it hasn't been.
In a like vein, some people say that the Talmud gives Jews permission to lie to gentiles. It sounds like the sort of vulgar paranoid thing that an anti-Semite would say, doesn't it? And what can you say when they come out with this shit apart from "Who gives a shit!"
Then he comes out, totally deadpan, with the sentence: "These are threats to the very core of what we believe." Well, it's nice to know that the great doubter does indeed believe something, no matter how tenuously. But if the beliefs in question really are so threatened by a bunch of Muslims, they can't be very strongly held.
Hitchens is a vile Islamaphobe, a disgusting antichrister and a raving misobuddhist steeped in hate, fear and revulsion, not just of religious faith and teaching per se but of anyone who follows a religious creed, and sick to his empty core with faith-hatred. If he takes this attitude to his grave, he's going to have to come back as something well-down the evolutionary scale and work his way back up to something approaching a human level very slowly and labouriously indeed, no doubt after being eaten alive by bigger beasties dozens of times along the way. I was hoping that this rendezvous with Ramadam might enlighten the miserable antitheistic perisher and save his soul. But now I fear we must pray to the Patron Saint of Blasphemers for a miracle.
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Reinstate, or just hire, some good writers at Salon!
Hitchwatch's political correctness officer, Stabler, analyzes Christopher's efforts to tiptoe through the self-censorship minefield that has recently blown up the media careers of Helen Thomas and Rick Sanchez and probably insured that I'll never be asked to write for Jewcy again.
As a practical matter we might place the work of Christopher Hitchens into two groups: the bad and the ugly. The bad might contain some clever intellectual subterfuge, a valid point or two, a modestly amusing one liner. Bad is still bad; while in the service of a point either over argued or just plain incorrect, Hitchens will also present dubious or misleading information to lead astray a reader unfortunate enough to consider Hitchens a credible or honest witness.
Then there are times when things get ugly, and such is the case with "Is it so offensive to to note the effectiveness of the Jewish lobby?", a piece which argues for the reinstatement of CNN's Rick Sanchez, fired this week for doing a spot on imitation of Ted Baxter on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
In Hitch's impressively inaccurate account of Sanchez's comments (quotes? you've got the wrong contrarian), he writes Sachez "made some rather heavily sarcastic remarks about the power of the American Jewish minority and sharing of it's liberal assumptions at the networks."
What Sanchez actually said was that, because of Jon Stewart's Jewish background and the professions of his parents, Stewart was a bigot unable to see his own prejudice or respect a different point of view. It was juvenile stuff, almost too mindless to be called anti-Semitic. Sanchez made no points, legitimate or foolish, about Jewish Power in the media. He essentially had a little hissy fit about being teased by TV comic. CNN, which must have SOME pretensions to serious journalism, didn't have much of a choice.
Hitchens ties this inaccurate account of Sanchez's supposed comments to the overreaction of some other, actual comments about the Jewish lobby by the editor of "Standpoint." I guess, straining to find something logical in Hitchens's take, you could call this a pattern.
This particular weak, weak link, however, throws quite shadow on Christopher Hitchens, man of principle. A few months back when Helen Thomas was fired for a comment of the kind Hitchens might well have found some buried courage in, He remained utterly silent. Hitch is all for fair play on the Israeli lobby, but neocon detractors need not apply.
This is maybe Hitch's most laughable piece of work since he pretended to not know what a chickenhawk was. Since Hitchens has actually said very little about how this Jewish Media domination has affected the coverage of The Middle East or anything else; maybe Hitchens is simply pointing out what it is to be merely chicken.
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Nought but nihilism; Does Hitchens believe in nothing?
Max Cunningham at The DoG Steet Journal is an idealistic, intelligent, impressionable and rather innocent young man who holds both Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’souza in high regard. In the tenth grade at school, his class watched a filmed debate between these two Chaucerian frauds and pronounced it a classic.
The Hitchens-D’souza duo was everything that my friends and I aspired to be, out-of-this-world intelligence communicated by fearless wit.
At this juncture, I had particular admiration for Hitchens. He had fired up debate across the country with his controversial writing, his promotion of anti-theism (as opposed to mere atheism).
I was 16, and I was questioning things for the first time. Hitchens verbalized for me, through his writing and confrontational style of debate, all the deeply-rooted unrest that I found so difficult to express.
However, a few short years later, Max has finally had the chance to see the Hitch live. Result: satori. Max has matured. Hitch hasn't. The scales have fallen from Max's eyes, the wetness behind the ears has dried up, and his idol has well and truly fallen.
Admittedly, much of the first forty-five minutes of debate went over my head. To a degree, I think of that as irrelevant; the real experience for me came with watching this guy think and hold an esteemed professor and a packed audience of college students with utter nonchalance.
I felt a little more engaged when the Middle East policy debate switched over to open forum-students questions. These questions tended to focus on the Christopher Hitchens I knew, the anti-theist.
In columns past, I’ve gotten into trouble when I assume that people believe one thing or another. With Christopher Hitchens, it’s a bit different; his beliefs couldn’t possibly be clearer.
That being said, I reached a broader conclusion about Christopher Hitchens for myself on Monday night. I could be insultingly wrong, but I’ll say it anyway.
Christopher Hitchens doesn’t believe in anything.
Yes, he doesn’t believe in the existence of a supernatural being. But I think it’s more than that. He believes in nothing.
I don’t want to dispute anything that Hitchens says. I’m not smart enough to comprehend the subtleties of his ideas, let alone refute his arguments.
Yet, I think my conclusion is reasonable.
I suspect Max is quite correct in stating that Christopher Hitchens doesn't believe in the existence of anything supernatural. Although the Preening Popinjay's own words indicate that he does have some pretty strong and dogmatic beliefs about a wide variety of things. For instance, he appears to believe that women aren't funny, that the Big Bang happened, that Martin Amis is a great novelist, that there are specifically Jewish genes, that religion poisons everything, that Iraqi WMD is still out there somewhere, that Gore Vidal was serious about anointing him (Hitch) as his (Gore's) Dauphin, that his egoic mind is the real him, that champagne is overrated, and that Mother teresa was an evil Albanian dwarf.
A run down this list only lends to support to G.K. Chesterton's old chestnut that "when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything."
Max puts his inability to comprehend the subtleties of Hitch's ideas dow to his own lack of smartness. I appreciate this modest stance, but I think he is mistaken. Hitch's "subtleties" consist in great measure of obfuscations, rhetorical sleight of hand, and the deliberate use of convoluted language and opaque ideas. His purpose is not to be understood or comprehended but to sound smart and baffling. And he has a talent for accomplishing this that rivals that of certain idiot savants who can perform amazing feats of mental arithmetic or recite the Iliad from memory. The physicist Richard Feynman (who was a lot smarter and, accordingly, a lot clearer than Hitchens) related a story about an occasion on which he delivered a presentation for a commission discussing ethics in education. After his talk, a stenographer approached and asked what his job was. Apparently, the stenographer assumed Feynman could not be a professor, since he was the only person on the commission whose presentation he understood. The story may not have been the literal truth, but it works well as a parable that illustrates how true brilliance is enlightening . While Hitch may twinkle twinkle like a little star, a public intellectual should at least shine brightly enough for the common or garden educated layman to read by.
“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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