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Christopher Hitchens

DC said:
Supporting a war you don't have to fight is not great.
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He went to Iraq many times and saw first hand the horror of the Baath regime.

and btw, i don't claim nor do i even think i added anything in the fight against religious fundamentalism.
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I know, you used to be an annoying truther.

ETA: and Writers write, that's what they do.
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And they talk when they're invited to discuss their books and editorials.
 
Pardalis said:
He went to Iraq many times and saw first hand the horror of the Baath regime.

I know, you used to be an annoying truther.

And they talk when they're invited to discuss their books and editorials.
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and how exactly did the Iraq war fight Fundamentalist Religion?

ETA:
I know, you used to be an annoying truther.
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and why did you ask me then, when you already knew?

to yet again point out i once was a truther?
 
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Pardalis said:
DC said:
and how exactly did the Iraq war fight Fundamentalist Religion?
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Ask the Iranians, how pissed they are that their neighbors have more freedoms than they do.
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That response makes no sense whatsoever. Though I suppose that's as close as you're able to come to conceding the point.
 
Pardalis said:
Ask the Iranians, how pissed they are that their neighbors have more freedoms than they do.
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so to fight fundamentalist religion we attack a non fundamentalist religious country Which then results in an power increase of fundamentalist religious groups?
 
Cleon said:
That response makes no sense whatsoever. Though I suppose that's as close as you're able to come to conceding the point.
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Since this is a thread about Hitchens, why not let him explain it himself?

Which brings me to a question that I think deserves to be asked: Did the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, have any germinal influence on the astonishing events in Iran? Certainly when I interviewed Sayeed Khomeini in Qum some years ago, where he spoke openly about "the liberation of Iraq," he seemed to hope and believe that the example would spread. One swallow does not make a summer. But consider this: Many Iranians go as religious pilgrims to the holy sites of Najaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq. They have seen the way in which national and local elections have been held, more or less fairly and openly, with different Iraqi Shiite parties having to bid for votes (and with those parties aligned with Iran's regime doing less and less well). They have seen an often turbulent Iraqi Parliament holding genuine debates that are reported with reasonable fairness in the Iraqi media. Meanwhile, an Iranian mullah caste that classifies its own people as children who are mere wards of the state puts on a "let's pretend" election and even then tries to fix the outcome. Iranians by no means like to take their tune from Arabs—perhaps least of all from Iraqis—but watching something like the real thing next door may well have increased the appetite for the genuine article in Iran itself.
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http://www.slate.com/id/2222254/
 
Pardalis said:
You can't possibly have read the article so quickly.
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the by you quoted part.

have now read the whole article, and still, he simply hopes it helps. and i doubt it will have big impact.
 
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I respect Hitchens because he confronts head on totalitarianism, while the Left either ignores it or blatantly endorses it to only focus on antimperialism (which would be a few illegal settlements in the West Bank, and America's colonisaton of...er... what American colony is there again? ... oh right... Liberia?)
 
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Yesterday I was at my local bookstore (Chapters, for all those familair with the Canadian chain), looking for "Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography" by Christopher Hitchens.

According to the store computer, the book was on sale (very cheap!), and there were two copies left in the store. The copies were shelved, according to the computer, at "Bargain: Academics." Now, Chapters has a number of Bargain shelves, but none of the shelves was expressly devoted to "Academics." I checked the Bargain Biography shelf, the Bargain Non-Fiction shelves, even the shelves devoted to self-help, miscellaneous and even fiction. I enlisted the aid of two bookstore employees, and we looked. Just as I was about to start checking the Bargain Children shelf, one of the employees found a copy.

On the Bargain Religion shelf.

I couldn't help it. I laughed. And I think Hitch would have laughed, too.
 
I too thought he looked and sounded pretty good, considering.

Favorite quote:

"I proposed a tradeoff the other day. I said, I'll tell you what, what if we secularists stop going to hospitals and walking around the wards and asking if people are religious, when they're in extremis, in their last days, and saying, 'Look, you've still got a little time, why don't you live the last few days of it as a free person? You'll feel much better. All that nonsense they taught you, you still have every chance to give it up, experience the life of a free-thinking autonomous person. Don't live in fear, don't believe in mythology.' They, I don't think, would welcome it. And of course, we don't do that. But it seems to be considered the right of almost everybody to do it the other way 'round."
 
I have downloaded the vid and will in full watch later.
As he is now growing hair , maybe he is off chemo -
but since the prognosis is so poor, that doesn't necessarily bode well.
 
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