UPDATE In response to the outraged, my position is simple. The Iraq War killed hundreds of thousands and maimed millions. Dead or wounded included over a million children. Those who planned the Iraq war, including those who used media positions to propagandise for it, have lost entitlement to the signs of society’s respect.
The world will undoubtedly be a duller place without Christopher Hitchens. Oh, and a better one too.
British journalism is full of people of the same generationwho have lurched from the Trotskyist far left to a crazed neo-con agenda with no intervening period of sanity. I suspect the available riches for zionist propagandists are a major factor. Hitchens, Aaronovitch, Phillips, Cohen. You can probably think of others. A strange and extremely unpleasant manifestation of intellectual prostitution.
Stephen said to me,
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“I am afraid I see absolutely nothing in your approach that would in retrospect have changed how Iraq slid to war – or more pertinently would change a similar momementum in Syria and Iran.”
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Sorry Stephen, I have not witnessed anything helpful or imaginative, visionary, stimulating or cool from any of your posts. You punch the clock only to deride, taunt, sneer, put down and accuse. I am neither angry or vehement, I *am* troubled, disturbed and dumbfounded by your naiveté and ignorance towards other countries that do not follow the hypocritical and deceitful democracy of the West. Your ‘real answer’ is wrong. ‘Sanctions’ cause great distress, illness and death to innocent civilians (Iraq?) and many ‘international institutions’ exist such as the UN, UNSC, IAEA and others chaired by Western puppets and stooges, whose internal membership and voting procedures are biased and need reform, and whose resolutions are ignored (Israel) or wrongly interpreted and ignored (Britain & America: Coalition of the Willing).
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No, Stephen it is clear to me in this and previous threads you are here out of resentment, your acrimony stinks of miff. Own up to it; let’s have an honest Yorkshireman.
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Shame, honesty and truth, uncovering deception and the power of intention will stop wars. My best advice to you, Stephen, is to read my posts as the reality unfolds. That is my last word.
@Stephen— The more I read of your Posts, the more I realise the manifest disconnection you have with the World; one perfect illustration of this, is that you just casually stated that “Iraq slid to war”, as if Iraq just happened to carelessly fall into what was a carefully long planned & criminally conceived & justified barbaric bombardment, invasion & occupation. Now you want me to equate the “nationalists” that Orwell was writing about to the anti-war Left (!); I think you will find that people who care enough to worry about people living aboard, who are about to be “liberated” (from life!) by our bombs, are internationalists rather than nationalists. Ironically you present as your example Galloway, but he is always stating that his detests nationalism, and actually often calls himself an “Internationalist” when discussing this issue on his radio show.
You moan about the apparent silence from the Left about abusive regimes, well do you really think that people who oppose strangers being killed by us, really don’t mind them being killed by others ?! The apparent silence is only silence because you don’t have it blasted in your face by the MSM when it is not deemed newsworthy, for instance did you know that your “first piece of evidence Mr George Galloway”, was actually an active campaigner, and a lone voice in Parliament, against the Saddam Regime, at a time when our Government & Arms Merchants were busy making money in doing business with him ? Also as it seems that you have never heard of the practise of employing provocateurs, I suggest you read up on the reports like the following, which the MSM somehow fails to present to you on a plate like all their other reports, a fact that probably accounts for your disconnection with reality;
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/12/07/washingtons-secret-wars/
Azra, thanks for the Hithens Paxman interview. Hitchens does quite a lot of talking about how he would defend himself were he to be proven wrong and there was life after death. But I guess when you’re dying there is not much on which you can defend yourself afterwards, except the legacy of words you left behind. As I said earlier, I think his prose-style is too academically boring to be worthy of attention, almost as boring as his mate’s, Salman. (Rushdie’s prose is so boring it is almost unreadable. Yawn! Yawn!) Hitchen’s spoken style is articulate, and there’s quite a lot of video footage, and if his reputation survives it is more likely to be resting on this than on the pen-pushing. His spoken word is much more worth listening to than his written-style is worth reading. He ought to have read Sir Ernest Gowers “The Complete Plain Words”, but he clearly didn’t, or to have taken a leaf out of Craig Murray’s book, a man whose prose-style is consistently readable. What I think he tried to do was address the intellectual snobs who he sees as superior and more worthy than we common folk. In that respect he can be equated with the poet Geoffrey Hill, who appeals to a select coterie of English poetry academics who palpably soar to greater heights than mere mortal skylarks, but do not sing so sweetly.
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Which brings me to Vaclav Havel. Agreed, Stephen, he was a poet and politician who to quote Tennyson, or misquote him, according to my memory, was one of “those who held their heads above the common crowd”. He flourished in the twentieth century as a poet, playwright and reformer, from what we know, shone. I might wager it was a big eye-opener for him to see how politicians behaved. No wonder he went back to being a playwright.
This is a few days old so don’t know if it has already been posted. It is Michel Chossudovsky on the Iran war postulations.
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http://youtu.be/_FokA3jwKVM
@John Goss: “was one of “those who held their heads above the common crowd””
What’s with this lavishing of praise on people with the blood of countless innocent people on their hands ?! Or does that not matter if they could string a flowery sentence or two together ?
Vaclav Havel: “Saddam Hussein’s regime poses a major threat to many nations and to his own people … there should be international intervention.”
Stephen, you’ve been getting quite a bit of flak tonight. Unfortunately people like you and Chris Hitchens lay yourselves open to it, even encourage it, I suspect. Hitchens claimed that it was a good thing to get rid of the once darling of the west, Saddam Hussein, but now the Yanks have, allegedly left, with their tails between their legs, as I wrote they would at the start of the war in 2003, having left countless bodies in their wake, I am proud, as I wrote two days ago of research from my university. It’s about how much worse things are for women since Bush and Blair’s war.
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The research is that of Dr Haifaa Jawad.
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http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2011/06/07JuneWomensufferingfromworstviolenceinhistoryofmodernIraq.aspx
Mark
My resentment is that nothing you say or do will do anything whatsoever to deal with the totalitarians that plague much of the Middle East and the rest of the world for that. You cannot select good and bad totalitarians. I only believe war should be used as a last resort against such – thats why other alternatives have to be thought about and developed. If you want the obscenity of Assad firing shells at Palestinian refugee camps (how about some honesty about that??) – then fine just carry on.
If you really think the lesson of Iraq is some kind of jihad against the USNatoIsrealMIC (or whatever you call what you see as an axis of evil) then you can go to hell in a handcart
And for the avoidance of doubt – I have so problem whatsoever with anyone uncovering deception and abuses of power in Western government and holding to account those responsible (shaming is meaningless mob rule stuff) – my gripe is that your authority to do so is undermined if you cannot recognise abuses on your side.
Macky
So Galloway having stood singlehandedly against Saddam ended up supporting his courage and indefatigability and having his political campaigns (not charities btw – or that is at least what he told the Charity Commissioners ) supported by money from said regime. What changed his mind – was the gassing of the Kurds or the Iranians or the tears that he shed on the break up o fthe Soviet Union. And I’m the one who has a disconnection to the World.
Strangely enough when I was a student involved in campaigns to support Iraqui students being beated up on British University camnpuses by Baathist thugs back in the late 70s and 1980s your lone voice was absolutley no where to be seen.
On Orwell – do you think he kept quiet about abuses by allies when he fought in the Spanish Civil War or later in WW2? So do you really think he wouldn’t say anything negative about Assad, Ahmadjinedad or the Palestininian Autrhority for that matter. Seems to me that you have something of a manifest disconnectiuon from Orwell as well.
Macky, I should have give the full quote, as I remember it. I must be some kind of politician selectively misquoting. “”In our schoolbooks we write of those who helt their heads above the crowd, he flourished then, or then, but life in him could scarce be said to flourish, only touched on such a time as comes before the leaf, when all the wood stands in a mist of green, and nothing perfect.” Great poet, Tennyson.
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You’ve got to remember that Havel, once he got out of politics was being fed by a media machine, though he had a mind of his own. This machine took in some very bright people. I am happy to say it did not take in me. Soon I will reveal all.
“At least 30,000 people were killed and 50,000 wounded in Libya’s six-month civil war, the interim health minister said, offering a first detailed estimate of the high cost in lives of bringing down Moammar Gadhafi.”
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/08/libya-war-died_n_953456.html
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{http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9835879}
I’m sure there’s some worm trawling this blog. What kind of a word is “helt” and where is the n off “given”? It’s a pity there are no editing facilities. That’s my biggest problem with the blog. It even screws up comments by the so-called trolls.
John
Of course it was a good thing to get rid of Saddam Hussain and any other dictators for that matter – regardless of who may or may not have supported them in the past. The real questions is how the disposal should be achieved and then how the transition to a new government should take place (and if you look at what Hitchens actually said he clearly acknowledges this). Any rational person can recognise that Iraq was not a good model for doing so (and if you look at what Hitchens actually said he clearly acknowledges this). But where is the thinking as to what are better models for achieving the transition – might I suggest that those who ignore the problem and chose to rant and rage about Iraq/ Israel/Tony Blair etc. etc. are going to contribute precious little in the way of a solution.
Macky,
Vaclav Havel was a prick whom turned Czech Republic into a drive-in whorehouse, destroyed the infrastructure and then went back to write the shite he used to, without much success, by then the communists were no more, and his “dissent” was no more in the vogue.
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Who was it who said Rushdie is boring? Dog on you, I should also like to add; boring, unimaginative and worst of all, fucking pretentious little prick trying to sound intellectual, that really raises my hackles, when I see pratts trying to sound “intelligent” by stringing words that sound “heavy”, and are to be found in the “Dictionary” in a grandiloquent fashion, following the formulae of pontifications for bought and paid for morons.
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The typist drone stephening about around this board, and its support team have been busy pushing the party line emailed to them from the HQ (GIYUS). Hence the circular cut and pastes that always are defending; War criminals, such as that putrid C. Hitchens, and anyone else who has aided and abetted the crimes against peace, by being a dutiful war enabler.
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In addition to their main task of war propaganda for new wars in Syria and Iran, Pakistan, China, etc. The unconscious drivel cut and pasted is similar to computer generated story lines; absolute bollocks that only makes sense to a particular mindset only associated with the standard issue ziofuckwit.
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As well as stopping any meaningful discussion about the shitty little strip of land, and sponsors thereof, included the venal politicians in the ziofuckwit pockets, as well as agents and promoters of the ziofuckwitistan.
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Finally, if the drone is a lawyer, boy I hope it is in conveyancing arm of the law, because reading the bollocks it has pasted here, proves he is pretty shit fucking useless.
Stephen, then, if it is OK to get rid of Saddam Hussain, who was never properly tried for his alleged crimes, it would be a good thing to get rid of Tony Blair, which we still have not managed to do? You do not live in Iraq so again I ask you to look at Mark Golidng’s pictures of little children who did live in Iraq and who were killed and maimed by NATO bombs, again I ask you to read about how much more domestic violence there is against Iraqi women since the war. Saddam Hussain, however much people might despise him, had a pluralist Iraq, something much more admirable than the mess the US retreating troops have left in their wake. Similarly Gadaffi had a much better Libya than the mess NATO and the NTC (who are they?) have tried to establish (this misery is still ongoing). When Hitler was doing nasty things outside Germany few people spoke up. But there were some.
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Most commentators on this blog are trying to ensure we have no more Tony Blairs, no more Hitlers, no more Pol Pots, no more Stalins. I invite you to join the crusade.
Macky, that’s a good quote from Orwell, but it wasn’t the one I was thinking of. Here is the one in which Orwell castigates those who consider themselves “pacifists”:
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The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough.
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I submit that the quote is still accurate if you alter, say, Tony Blair for Churchill; Iran, Hamas and Hizbollah for Russia, China and India.
John Goss, the Paxman interview took place in November 2010 and the debate on the afterlife with the rabbis occured in February 2011 so I propose that we take his remarks in that debate as definitive.
obfuscation …… obfuscation…… Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries. …….conflation, …… bollocks, I sub……
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Who is defending the West against what? Orwell was not talking about banksters evidently, because they are the only source of danger to the West, that so far has not been subject to any kind of defence activities.
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There are no dangers to West, Isreal can screech all it wants but there are no dangers to the West from anywhere.
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Epic fail
In a nutshell, Mr Murray.
“You cannot hope to bribe nor twist –
Thank God! – the British journalist.
But, seeing what the brute will do
Unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”
Except that Hitchens took the zionist shekel too. He would have
sold his granny for sixpence. His piggy-backing on Orwell was shameless, as he epitomized Orwell’s detested comfortable armchair apologists for slaughter, in Hitchens’ case, the
legions of dead Iraqis. Always a pickled Dorian Gray, he left Oxford [my contemporary] with a third-class degree FFS. It is almost impossible to get a third, unless you are superhumanly dense. He specialized in attacking people who were too
grand to respond [Kissinger, Clinton, God] or else dead, especially if they were friends whose kindness he could betray, like Edward Said, or 85-year-old Gore Vidal. He left England
because the Brits are wise to the blustering rubicund saloon-bar bore, and he would have ended up as a lampoon in Private Eye. In 30 years in the US, he never let an American vowel flatten his plummy accent, lest it dilute the brand of the alcoholic English sage abroad. Rather than live in New York,
which would have seen through him, he chose DC, where he could be a shrimp among krill. He was a tory through and through,
but pretended to be a Trot because he felt superior to the realtors down the golf club. Alcoholism was the key to his record, since it affects the brain, and causes childish, petulant and erratic behaviour. [The alcoholic is the
last to realize]. He affected the mature voice of experience – statesman, minister, diplomat, general – but never held any office. He was just a scribbler with endlessly changeable opinions, but no ideas – the phoney baloney.
Always a pickled Dorian Gray, he left Oxford [my contemporary] with a third-class degree FFS. It is almost impossible to get a third, unless you are superhumanly dense.
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One of our prime minister’s got one of those. I think it was Bonar-Law or Douglas-Home. There’s no way they could be called superhumanly dense.
Oh, it’s always the good ones who die young!
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Hitchens, Vaclav Haval and now, Kim Jong-il!
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16239693
FedUp: There are no dangers to West, Isreal can screech all it wants but there are no dangers to the West from anywhere.
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Well, the US was attacked on September 11th, of course. Now, it may be true that the response was incredibly exaggerated, if not downright loopy, but you cannot argue that there was no attack.
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Boniface: He affected the mature voice of experience – statesman, minister, diplomat, general – but never held any office. He was just a scribbler with endlessly changeable opinions, but no ideas – the phoney baloney.
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Yep, he was a bit of a poor man’s Conor Cruise O’Brien, who you no doubt also hated.
Tony Judt was a better essayist as well.
I don’t think Vaclav Havel salivated as Hitchens did, at the ability of cluster bombs to penetrate a Koran in a Muslim’s coat pocket.
“Those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. So they won’t be able to say, ‘Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.’ No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words.”
Just another imperialist armchair warrior drooling over wog corpses.
I see the Jong-Un’s taken over the reigns in North Korea. I didn’t even know his daddy was Il.
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Remember, let’s not speak Il of the dead.
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Things are inevitabrery going to change.
John Goss,
On Rushdie You and I are of the same mind, I remember my old boss who is an avid reader, was held up in Kuwait and had to hide inside his house for 4 months. He said “even when I run out of all the reading materials, I could not finsih his (Rushdie) book!” I believe the only reason his book (Satanic verses) became a best seller was people’s curiosity, and the Fetwa! so in fact Khomeini did him a favour, imagine all that publicity 🙂
angryssssssssssssoba:
uso tsssssssssssukanaide.
Well, the US was attacked on September 11th, of course
I have seen your vehement denial of the 9/11 truth, and your constant put down of anyone who has started to debate the sham “attacks” on 9/11, now it clicks well together, because without the myth of the attacks, there are no dangers to the West, and your kind are in dire straights for finding an excuse to route the Muslims from the face of the Earth.
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PS Loopy, bananas, and a whole bowl of fruit cocktail , but all the same you can tear your arse and be as angry as you like, fact is 9/11 was an inside job.
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Now run along and find a Palestinian to demolish his house to make you feel better.
“uso tsssssssssssukanaide.”
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Are you calling me a liar? Fine! What did I lie about?
I have seen your vehement denial of the 9/11 truth, and your constant put down of anyone who has started to debate the sham “attacks” on 9/11, now it clicks well together, because without the myth of the attacks, there are no dangers to the West, and your kind are in dire straights for finding an excuse to route the Muslims from the face of the Earth.
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The reverse is obviously true of you. Because you know such attacks are unjustified you have to believe they were perpetrated by the Israelis or someone else. If it turned out you were wrong your world would fall apart. That’s your problem. Deal with it because I don’t care for your silliness.
“Because you know such attacks are unjustified you have to believe they were perpetrated by the Israelis or someone else.”
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So the doubts are there, and thoughts have crossed your mind, but, you are rationalising the evil plots that turned 21st century into the century of genocide.
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Dancing Israelis caught on the 9/11 in the sight of the burning and smoking WTC obviously were so upset, grief stricken as they highfived and danced to celebrate “Mission Accomplished”.
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Isn’t it time to stop projecting; “silliness”, and stopped being so insane
“One of our prime minister’s got one of those. I think it was Bonar-Law or Douglas-Home. There’s no way they could be called superhumanly dense.”
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Do you actually remember Douglas-Home? There was no other description for him.