Christopher Hitchens RIP 437


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.


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437 thoughts on “Christopher Hitchens RIP

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  • Karel

    An amusing comment by Gordon Duff on the demise of CH appeared in VT.

    “He was compared to Orwell and nearly everyone else. Problem is, he wrote on issues spies are supposed to know about, and got so much of it utterly wrong, like he was paid to get it wrong.”

    cf. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/12/16/spies-just-another-job-but-dumber/

    If some honorable contributors to this great discussion find time to read the article above, they may ask themselves who is “tasked” here, to use GDs terminology, and whether individuals like Stephen may know of “Building 7”.

  • John Goss

    Herbie, “Traditional conservatives are like angels compared to these neocons.” For Christopher Hitchens and his brother the Tory philosophy of Winston Churchill’s fits: “If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” Churchill was a great writer, historian and orator, he was also a pratt and public disgrace at times. If you like, a Dorian Gray figure, as was perhaps, Wilde himself. He was looking at the world from his own perspective, as we all do. Ted Heath, even though I demonstrated with the miners, was a traditional Tory, and I do have respect for him. On my father’s side I come from a long line of miners, who sweated and toiled in the candlelight to keep the home fires burning. On my mother’s side my ancestors were silversmiths and thespians.
    .
    Tonight on Newsnight it showed Hitchens being interviewed by Paxman last year, when Hitchens knew he was dying. I detected a slight sign that Hitchens might have been recanting his total atheism. It was no longer as absolute as it had been before. He said something to the effect that “if there is something afterwards, it will be a surprise. I like surprises.”
    .
    So yes, the maternal side of me says traditional conservatives and we have a common enemy, if that is Cameron, Hague, Osborne, Fox and crew, while the paternal side asks the workers of the world to unite. I should add here that my parents had no disagreement over politics. They were Labour – but that was not the Labour we have since Blair took control. Mum many times said she worshipped the ground my dad walked on. And he was a lovely man – with faults, of course, as we all have.
    .
    Are you suggesting a deal?

  • Herbie

    Yeah, Jives. I know.
    .
    The IRA were a much greater threat to England than these Islamist bogeymen, and there was little of the panic our leaders wish to instill in us today.
    .
    Funny that a real threat is less of a worry.
    .
    I was just wondering what Angry thought.
    .
    The real clou lies in the end of the IRA campaign and how MI5 and MI6 spokespeople spoke openly on tellie about the much greater threat to come from the Islam bogey, and funnily enough they even went to great lengths to indicate that the IRA somehow fought in a more civilsed way than what was to come from the Islamists. They emphasized that the IRA gave warnings and didn’t blow up tube trains and mass concentrations etc. Yes. they really were saying things like that.
    .
    It was almost as if the IRA were Saints compared to the great bogey to come from the East.
    .
    Curious, eh.

  • angrysoba

    Karel, I think the dreary 9/11 conspiracy theories have been done to death many times over. There’s a whole thread in which that nonsense is debunked in the archives.

  • Fedup

    Suhayl Saadi,
    Comparing apples and pears argument do not cut the mustard; A singer does not publish oodles of unconscious drivel, in justification of mass murder.
    ,
    The list of characters you recollect, somehow did not so openly and comprehensively flout the prevailing; treaties, conventions, and the laws, in their bidding to commit their intended crimes.
    ,
    Further, the forwarded spurious contention of absolutism, cannot mask the current open access to the torrents of information, which were not available, or were classified and out of the reach of the constituents of the rouges gallery you have conjured up.
    ,
    The crimes against peace are absolute and no mitigating counter argument can be forwarded, that will not result in declaring the Nuremberg Principles null and void.

  • angrysoba

    Herbie, please re-read my comment to Stephen as it was a response to what he was saying about “dealing with” Iran and Syria. I had meant to put the words in quotes as I did then but thought it would be obvious that I was not advocating war myself.

  • Herbie

    John
    .
    It’s always wise to make alliances against a common enemy.
    .
    The common enemy to my mind is those whose desire for profit is greater than their desire for the good of our common humanity.
    .
    In both trad Labour and Conservatives you’ll see those latter values.
    .
    You don’t see them in algorithmic trading or neocons.

  • John Goss

    Stephen, you talk about what you assume to be my “ridiculous comparisons” between Blair, Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler. Just below this comment is one by Mark Golding – Children of Iraq. I invite you not to read Mark’s comment, though his comments are always worthy of reading, but instead to click on the blue text of “Mark Golding – Children of Iraq”. Tell me then if the images you see are not the images we have seen from all dictators over the centuries.
    .
    As for Clare Short’s revelations about Blair as a dictator I offer the following.
    .
    “In the second term, the problem is centralisation of power into the hands of the prime minister and an increasingly small number of advisers who make decisions in private without proper discussion.
    .
    It is increasingly clear, I’m afraid, that the Cabinet has become in Bagehot’s phrase a dignified part of the constitution …
    .
    There is no real collective responsibility because there is no collective, just diktats in favour of increasingly badly thought through policy initiatives that come from on high.
    .
    The consequences of this are serious. Expertise in our system lies in departments.
    .
    Those who dictate from the centre do not have full access to this expertise and they do not consult. This leads to bad policy.”
    .
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3022139.stm
    .
    So almighty Stephen, what historical evidence do you have to rebuff these historical facts? Or are you, as I suspect, just piss and wind?

  • Jives

    Angrysoba,
    .
    “There’s a whole thread in which that nonsense is debunked in the archives.”
    .
    I agree that those discussions should be kept in that thread but i must also say i don’t think anything was really debunked insofar as both sides presented their evidence and views and i don’t think many changed from their original positions.

  • John Goss

    Herbie, I agree. Negotiation, consultation, common ground is always better than conflict, conflagration or outright war.

  • Karel

    Angrysoba

    i suspect that rather than reading the GBs article you are offering us a “debunked” dance at the 9/11 conspiracy pole. Are you “tasked” by any chance? Do you know “Building 7″ or have you heard of hasbara? Are you loosing the thread or have you just received new orders?

  • crab

    Who dared shine a little light on this shade? When is it time to curse the wrong and when to bless all? it would seem too far…

  • angrysoba

    Karel, my bosses at NWO HQ tell me that Building 7 is none of your business or mine and that I am to keep doing “hasbara”. I don’t even know what “hasbara” means! And I have no intention of reading any more BS from GB. I once went to his weird site and needed a bath after.

  • angrysoba

    I also think that you have deluded yourself into thinking you have some great insight into the hidden workings of the world just because you have learnt to imitate the patter of the “surveillance world” (“tasked”, “hasbara” etc…). It is common behaviour of those who want to appear to have priveleged knowledge to use jargon like that.
    .
    You could just ask, “Are you paid by anyone to write on this site?”
    .
    The answer is “no. I am not”.

  • Steph

    @Patrick – how amusing that you castigate Mr. Murray for his opinion, when Christopher Hitchens was infamous for loosing his caustic tongue upon the recently deceased.

    When Ronald Reagan died, Hitchens eulogised him as a “stupid and cruel lizard” within 2 days of his passing, Jerry Falwell was tarred as a “Chaucerian fraud”, while for Arafat the epitaph engraved was “what a squalid and ignoble terminus, to a life of steadily diminishing returns…”

  • stephen

    JOhn Goss

    You really are infantile – every politician who is involved in a war is not Pol Pot, Hitler or Stalin. Clare Short does not employ such a description of Blair. And if she had attacked Pol Pot, Hitler or Stalin in a similar fashionto to which she attacked Blair do you really think she would still be alive? As I said please go anbd read some history – your comparison is idiotic in the extreme.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    So, people are either wholly evil or wholly good, FedUp? Guevara? Tito? Nkrumah? Robeson? Castro? Graham Greene? Aldo Moro? Bobby Sands? Clement Atlee, Eisenstein? ? To you, they all may be “rogues” – perhaps, then, roguery is what humanity is about! If that were the case, there is no point in political discourse at all. Robeson was much, much more than ‘jsut’ a singer – why do you minimise him? He was a Communist, a Stalinist, an African-American icon, a lawyer, a genius. And why would being “a singer” be something of less consequence than “a writer”? Haven’t you heard of the Beatles? Or Maria Callas? Or Mehdi Hassan? Or Mohammad Rafi? Or Umm Qulsum? Have you any idea of how many people across the world, across different language groups and different cultures, were inspired and influenced by Robeson? Why do you think the US authorities stopped him from performing in public and took away his passport? Paul Robeson is still an iconic figure – rightly so – 36 years after his death and nearly 50 years after he vanished – was forced to vanish – from the public sphere. It’s not ‘mitigation’ I write about here, it’s realism. It’s the real world. It’s not a world of angels and demons, of saved and damned. How many of us can throw stones, when we all live in glass houses? Better a glass house, than the grave of absolutism, especially, perhaps, religious absolutism. But of course, the grave is safe.

  • stephen

    Angrysoba

    No I don’t think war with Syria and Iran is inevitable or desirable – but I do belive that the chances will be increased considerably if nothing is done to address the current behaviour of their governing regimes. Sitting back and doing nothing will only make things worse in the long run: and is one of the reasons why I detest those who advocate such a course of action – problems never go away by ignoring them.

  • Iain Orr

    Suhayl:
    “Politics is not religion…” (above, 16 Dec 11.45pm ). I agree; and Hitchins deserves credit for some well-aimed polemical strikes against “religious absolutism” (you at 9.33 this morning ). I also entirely agree with your reminder of Paul Robeson’s heroic status, flaws and all: have you seen Tayo Aluko’s “Call Mr Robeson”, his fine one-man dramatisation of Robeson’s battle with the FBI (see http://tinyurl.com/6xsschd ) ?

    Meanwhile, it awoke Hitchins-like ire in me when Radio 4 woke me today to the item on Cameron’s “bold Christian gamble” – his Back to Christianity speech in Oxford on 16 December- together with the comment that this was the speech Tony Blair longed to give but was never allowed to because of Campbell’s fatwa: “We don’t do God.” Sad to be unable now to look forward to Hitchins’ comments on the Oxford speech.

    Are there no depths Cameron’s shallowness will not plumb? Using Christianity and the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible ( see the Guardian account at http://tinyurl.com/cbo5xxk ) to stake his claims to the debatable lands of public morality is, I suppose, a logical land-grab to follow wrapping his Pyrrhic European victory – and the current Afghan War – in the flag of patriotism. One reason politicians do this – as evidence to the Leveson Inquiry confirms – is to get favourable media coverage. There is, however, a striking contrast between Blair’s hot Catholicism bubbling fervently under the surface of his premiership and Cameron’s Laodicean Anglicism (Revelation 3:14-22), pitching for his version of “regular guy” status by describing himself as a “committed but vaguely practising Church of England Christian”.

    .
    Now to relations between politicians and the press and the pusillanimity of the fourth estate. Most celebrity and political sex scoops are published with the public interest justification of revealing as hypocrites those who would be role models or moralistic legislators. Cameron’s latest crusade deserves mockery far more than did Mellors’ and Fergie’s toe-suckings*. Using his Christianity to sheath his party and government in prophylactic virtue while shafting the poor and giving the rich blow-jobs should mean that Cameron finds commentators and radio/TV interviewers reminding him of some of the central themes of the Abrahamic and other faiths. They could start with these ones:
    .
    “ If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven. (Matthew xix: 21)
    .
    “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.” (Deuteronomy iv: 26)
    .
    “Give just measures, and cause no loss (to others by fraud). And weigh with scales true and upright. And withhold not things justly due to men, and do no evil in the land, working mischief.” ( Sura 26 Ash-Shuara [The Poets]:181-3)

    .
    I’d prefer my Prime Minister to don the rags of a penitent before aspiring to the exegetic role of a scriptural preacher, whether garbed as bishop, minister, rabbi, imam or Buddhist monk. That said, in reality I would probably not enjoy being governed by a cabinet of millionaires who had given up their wealth to reduce the National Debt (rather than to media-friendly cancer and ex-servicemen charities) and agreed to live on the national average wage. I’d be stifled by sanctimonious smoke. However, it’s a fate I’d be willing to submit to for the public interest in the experiment of being governed by pure prigs, rather than by Cameroonian moneyed hypocrites and prigs.
    .
    *After all:
    Babies and lovers’ toes express
    ecstasies of wantonness;
    that’s a language which we lose
    with the trick of wearing shoes.
    Alex Comfort (1920-2000), in his collection “Haste to the Wedding”, 1961.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    “No I don’t think war with Syria and Iran is inevitable or desirable – but I do believe that the chances will be increased considerably if nothing is done to address the current behaviour of their governing regimes.” Stephen.
    .
    Perhaps, first, we would be well advised to consider addressing the behaviour of our own governing regimes? Problems never go away by ignoring them.

  • Azra

    Stephen, “the chances will be increased ….”, oh my oh my, is there any chance that with the atrocities done by Israel that we will go in there and teaching them a lesson? or do we go into Saudi and Bahrain first?? oh no! I remember now! they are ruled by our SOBs, (in the case of of Israel, we are ruled by theirs).

    I am from Iran originally, and a total anti present regime, but let me tell you one thing, rather them than the Shah who was Puppet of the West, and I can say with confidence my views on that regards shared by majority in Iran. The west cannot stomach that the present government of Iran, vile as it is , it is not subservient. Please just leave us alone, your governments interfered long and hard in our affairs and the fact we ended up with our regimes in the ME, is the result of their policies, and do not send your armies under false presences, the change in Syria or Iran, will come from within, not without.

  • stephen

    Suhayl

    I don’t see the addressing the problems as mutually exclusive – far from it. You make the point very well that most people are neither wholly good or bad – I thing someone said non one interesting is without contradictions or similar – but the one thing that Hitchens and Orwell made clear is that you cannot be selective in dealing with bad. Perhaps we need a little hard thinking about increasing our armoury of dealing with bad from beyond its present bare cupboard of doing nothing and war.

    Azra

    Does leaving alone include allowing the current regime free access to western banking systems and allowing them to buy their weapons, implements of torture and the means for devloping nuclear weapons or allowing them to sponsor Hezbollah, Hamas and Syrian thugsoutside Iran? Should Amnesty International and HRW not highlight Iranian prisoners of conscience and human rights abuses. Do you think that the Turks should stop weapons being smugled to the resistance in Syria? There is lot that can be given in the way of support before sending armies – which in the case of Iran I agree would be stupid at present.

  • Iain Orr

    Is my posting below still being moderated?

    Suhayl:
    “Politics is not religion…” (above, 16 Dec 11.45pm ). I agree; and Hitchins deserves credit for
    some well-aimed polemical strikes against “religious absolutism” (you at 9.33 this morning ).
    I also entirely agree with your reminder of Paul Robeson’s heroic status, flaws and all: have you seen Tayo Aluko’s “Call Mr Robeson”, his fine one-man dramatisation of Robeson’s battle with the FBI (see http://tinyurl.com/6xsschd ) ?

    Meanwhile, it awoke Hitchins-like ire in me when Radio 4 woke me today to the item on Cameron’s “bold Christian gamble” – his Back to Christianity speech in Oxford on 16 December- together with the comment that this was the speech Tony Blair longed to give but was never allowed to because of Campbell’s fatwa: “We don’t do God.” Sad that we are unable now to look forward to Hitchins’ comments on the Oxford speech.

    Are there no depths Cameron’s shallowness will not plumb? Using Christianity and the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible ( see the Guardian account at http://tinyurl.com/cbo5xxk ) to stake his claims to the debatable lands of public morality is, I suppose, a logical land-grab to follow wrapping his pyrrhic European victory – and the current Afghan War – in the flag of patriotism. One reason politicians do this – as evidence to the Leveson Inquiry confirms – is to get favourable media coverage. There is, however, a striking contrast between Blair’s hot Catholicism bubbling fervently under the surface of his premiership and Cameron’s Laodicean Anglicism (Revelation 3:14-22), pitching for his version of “regular guy” status by describing himself as a “committed but vaguely practising Church of England Christian”.

    .
    Now to relations between politicians and the press and the pusillanimity of the fourth estate. Most celebrity and political sex scoops are published with the public interest justification of revealing as hypocrites those who would be role models or moralistic legislators. Cameron’s latest crusade deserves mockery far more than did Mellors’ and Fergie’s toe suckings*. Using his Christianity to sheath his party and government in prophylactic virtue while shafting the poor and giving the rich blow-jobs should mean that Cameron finds commentators and radio/TV interviewers reminding him of some of the central themes of the Abrahamic and other faiths. They could start with these ones:
    .
    “ If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven. (Matthew xix: 21)
    .
    “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.” (Deuteronomy 1v: 26)
    .
    “Give just measures, and cause no loss (to others by fraud). And weigh with scales true and upright. And withhold not things justly due to men, and do no evil in the land, working mischief.” ( Sura 26 Ash-Shuara [The Poets]:181-3)

    .
    I’d prefer my Prime Minister to don the rags of a penitent before aspiring to the exegetic role of a scriptural preacher, whether garbed as bishop, minister, rabbi, imam or Buddhist monk. That said, in reality I would probably not enjoy being governed by a cabinet of millionaires who had given up their wealth to reduce the National Debt (rather than to media-friendly cancer and ex-servicemen charities) and agreed to live on the national average wage. I’d be stifled by sanctimonious smoke. However, it’s a fate I’d be willing to submit to for the public interest in the experiment of being governed by pure prigs, rather than by Cameroonian moneyed hypocrites and prigs.
    .
    *After all:
    Babies and lovers’ toes express
    ecstasies of wantonness;
    that’s a language which we lose
    with the trick of wearing shoes.
    Alex Comfort (1920-2000), in his collection “Haste to the Wedding”, 1961.

  • stephen

    Mary

    And who would you suggest as an independent judge on the conditions in Iran and Syria?

    BTW 13 blocks would be one helluva golf swing.

  • Azra

    Stephen, LOL, the sanctions have made Iranian government hell of lot stronger and Iran a hell of lot more self sufficient.. In shah’s time we were importing wheat from USA, and they would take our oil, now we export wheat, industries are producing everything from Car , computer or nail, you find a fraction of the items built in China or Korea, etc.. As regarding banking, thank God Iranian banks are kept away from bankrupt banks of USA and Europe. I suggest you read the latest report of IMF (whose report are normally biased against Iran). Even they could not deny it that Iran’s economic situation is a lot better than it is portrayed in the west.
    Also in your response you were disingenuous, (same as many right wingers!), you did not respond to my questions re Israel , Saudi and Bahrain human right abuses, suggest you read Amensty and HRW reports on those countries first, they are far worse than Iran. But as I said our servants so why bother with them.

  • Iain Orr

    Suhayl:
    “Politics is not religion…” (above, 16 Dec 11.45pm ). I agree; and Hitchens deserves credit for some well-aimed polemical strikes against “religious absolutism” (you at 9.33 this morning ). I also entirely agree with your reminder of Paul Robeson’s heroic status, flaws and all: have you seen Tayo Aluko’s “Call Mr Robeson”, his fine one-man dramatisation of Robeson’s battle with the FBI?

    Meanwhile, it awoke Hitchens-like ire in me when Radio 4 woke me today to the item on Cameron’s “bold Christian gamble” – his Back to Christianity speech in Oxford on 16 December- together with the comment that this was the speech Tony Blair longed to give but was never allowed to because of Campbell’s fatwa: “We don’t do God.” Sad that we are unable now to look forward to Hitchens’ comments on the Oxford speech.

    Are there no depths Cameron’s shallowness will not plumb? Using Christianity and the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible ( see the Guardian account at http://tinyurl.com/cbo5xxk ) to stake his claims to the debatable lands of public morality is, I suppose, a logical land-grab to follow wrapping his pyrrhic European victory – and the current Afghan War – in the flag of patriotism. One reason politicians do this – as evidence to the Leveson Inquiry confirms – is to get favourable media coverage. There is, however, a striking contrast between Blair’s hot Catholicism bubbling fervently under the surface of his premiership and Cameron’s Laodicean Anglicism (Revelation 3:14-22), pitching for his version of “regular guy” status by describing himself as a “committed but vaguely practising Church of England Christian”.

    .
    Now to relations between politicians and the press and the pusillanimity of the fourth estate. Most celebrity and political sex scoops are published with the public interest justification of revealing as hypocrites those who would be role models or moralistic legislators. Cameron’s latest crusade deserves mockery far more than did Mellors’ and Fergie’s toe-suckings*. Using his Christianity to sheath his party and government in prophylactic virtue while shafting the poor and giving the rich blow-jobs should mean that Cameron finds commentators and radio/TV interviewers reminding him of some of the central themes of the Abrahamic and other faiths. They could start with these ones:
    .
    “ If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven. (Matthew xix: 21)
    .
    “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.” (Deuteronomy 1v: 26)
    .
    “Give just measures, and cause no loss (to others by fraud). And weigh with scales true and upright. And withhold not things justly due to men, and do no evil in the land, working mischief.” ( Sura 26 Ash-Shuara [The Poets]:181-3)

    .
    I’d prefer my Prime Minister to don the rags of a penitent before aspiring to the exegetic role of a scriptural preacher, whether garbed as bishop, minister, rabbi, imam or Buddhist monk. That said, in reality I would probably not enjoy being governed by a cabinet of millionaires who had given up their wealth to reduce the National Debt (rather than to media-friendly cancer and ex-servicemen charities) and agreed to live on the national average wage. I’d be stifled by sanctimonious smoke. However, it’s a fate I’d be willing to submit to for the public interest in the experiment of being governed by pure prigs, rather than by Cameroonian moneyed hypocrites and prigs.
    .
    *After all:
    Babies and lovers’ toes express
    ecstasies of wantonness;
    that’s a language which we lose
    with the trick of wearing shoes.
    Alex Comfort (1920-2000), in his collection “Haste to the Wedding”, 1961.

  • macky

    @Stephen/Angrysoba – I stayed up to almost passed my bedtime last night searching for the Hitchens quote, but to no avail; I come across it on a Quotes site years ago, at the time of the big Galloway-Hitchens debate, and I took it as authentic as it was the sort of typical offensive smart-arsed comment that he makes, and it was framed more pseudo-intellectually than I have written it, again another characteristic of his. This was long before the issues of the Koran burning US Preacher, but all the search engines bring up now are tons of references to this. I can only conclude that either too deeply buried in the Preacher reports, or it was a remark that he made, and so no written record exists, or that it was a mis-quote, or a bogus quote. However this is very superfluous to my point about Hitchens being an Islamophobe.

    His very opposition to Religion in general in itself is Islamophobic by definition, and it’s very telling that his was vitriolic about Islam for quite a time before he widen his criticism to include all religions. 9/11 seems to have such an effect on him that it appears to have caused a complete polar-switch in his political beliefs & views, and seems to have brought out his obviously upto then, latent hatred of Muslims.

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