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, why does not west take an active interest in Zimbabwe? is it because 1) they do not have oil and 2) they are not next door to Israel?
You ask me whether Amnesty should not highlight the HR abuses in Iran, yes they should, and they do, but it seems the interest is only in Iran’s HR abuses and not in other countries, look at our government in the west, now kissing backside of Karimov the most vile, vicious dictator in the world. Let’s sort him out first..oops I forgot, he is friend of Israel, and he allows the western government use his country to send troops/arms/everything to Afghanistan, so they can kill innocent people, and above all at the moment he is our SOB.. right?
and what do you mean at the moment attacking Iran is stupid? it is stupid at any time, the way it was stupid to invade Iraq, the way it was stupid to go to Afghanistan, and the rest. And let’s talk about Israel Nuclear capability, Iran does not have nuclear weapon, there is a timeline from 1981, every year in the west it is claimed Iran is 6 month, 1 year, two year, five years from making a nuclear bomb. How many years it is now since 1981??? if you can work out..
This man’s passing,
his passion,
his lesson in compassion?
Not for me to judge,
I will have my own soon enough.
“I rant”, “you rant”,”he rants”.
Some rant facility,
but fewer and fewer,
– unless they have something to sell.
Some rant Ayn Rand.
“I am without compassion.
– that is my wall, the Apartheid in my soul,
for God abandoned me to other Nazis.”
– not the ones we see today –
those we have become.
Stephen, piss and wind, as I suggested.
The ziofuckwit has a lot more pressing stuff in his mail box from GIYUS; the paragon of Human Rights, and the Only Democracy in the Known Universe (I should cocoa) has troubles in kidding the world about the way it treats Arab “Minority” so the report says.
,
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The European Union should consider Israel’s treatment of its Arab population a “core issue, not second tier to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” according to a classified working paper produced by European embassies in Israel, parts of which were obtained by Haaretz.
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Well he is off to stephen about along with the other ziobots cutting and pasting oodles of “antisemite, antisemite Nazi, Nazi, antisemite, ….. attack Iran …. torture not us……. Iran torture yey…….why are you not leaving us to get on with our own apartheid…. antis…..our own private genocide of Palestinians, antisemite, antisemite.
,
‘
Meanwhile this awful shit on the barn door example of the ZBC (do these bastards get their license fee from Isreal?).
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These are the headlines for you perusal note the “vandals” ZBC uses, whilst everyone else has used “Settlers”;
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Secret EU paper aims to tackle Israel’s treatment of Arab minority
Haaretz – Dec 16, 2011
Paper states EU should consider Israel’s treatment of its Arab population a ‘core issue’, and not second tier to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By Barak Ravid Tags: Jews and Arabs The European Union should consider Israel’s treatment of its Arab …
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Israel Leader Sets Curbs on Settlers for Violence
New York Times – Dec 14, 2011
A protester trying to enter an apartment where settlers live, in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in Jerusalem, while a police officer conducted a search. By ETHAN BRONNER JERUSALEM — After two days of settler violence that shocked much of Israel, …
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Settlers Riot, Attacking Israeli Base and Post
New York Times – Dec 13, 2011
By ETHAN BRONNER JERUSALEM — Dozens of radical Jewish settlers, reacting to a rumor that several of their outposts would be dismantled, attacked an Israeli Army base in the West Bank on Tuesday, lighting fires, vandalizing vehicles and throwing stones, …
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Israeli military base attacked by Jewish extremists in West Bank
The Guardian – Dec 13, 2011
A gang of 50 Jewish settlers and rightwing activists have broken into an army base near the Israeli settlement of Kedumim in the West bank, setting fire to tyres and hurling rocks at both Israeli soldiers and Palestinians. One settler forced open the …
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Israel pledges action against extremist settlers
Financial Times – Dec 14, 2011
By Tobias Buck in Jerusalem The Israeli government announced a plan to crack down on extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank on Wednesday, amid warnings from the country’s defence minister that Israel was facing a new threat of Jewish “terrorism”. …
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Vandals attack disused Jerusalem mosque
BBC News – Dec 14, 2011
Vandals have set fire to a disused 12th Century mosque in the centre of Jerusalem and left graffiti insulting the Prophet Muhammad on its walls. Jerusalem’s mayor denounced the attack, which caused no structural damage. The incident is being linked to …
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Arab women filmmakers shine at Dubai festival
AFP – Dec 14, 2011
DUBAI — A tale of forbidden love in the Gaza Strip won the top prize at the eighth Dubai Film Festival on Wednesday, where a new generation of Arab women directors stole the spotlight. “Habibi” (My Love in Arabic), directed by Susan Youssef, …
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EU concerned over Israel’s Arab minority: report
AFP – Dec 16, 2011
JERUSALEM — EU ambassadors in Israel are concerned over Israel’s treatment of its Arab minority and about poor prospects for relaunching peace talks with the Palestinians, according to a working paper disclosed by daily newspaper Haaretz on Friday. …
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Vandals try to start fire in West Bank mosque
BBC News – Dec 15, 2011
By Yolande Knell BBC News, Jerusalem Vandals have started a fire in a mosque in a West Bank village, in the second such attack in two days. Officials in Burka, east of Ramallah, said that carpets and chairs were burnt in the local mosque and Hebrew …
Norman Finkelstein reports a Big Loss
{http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/big-loss/}
linking to
http://www.flickr.com/photos/haddadmedia/3499375451/
Note the disordered shirt neck button and bow tie. A nod to the other Intellectual Giant, Bernard-Henri Levy perhaps?
The media’s sycopantic eulogizing over this apologist for the mass slaughter of over a million Iraqi’s, is truelly stomach churning. Channel 4 news was particularly guilty of this having cut to an interview with Blair who praised him for sticking to his principles…Nuff said.
How charming of the dear departed one.
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In Arab culture there is a strong imperative to not speak ill of the dead, but I’m going to have to make an exception for Christopher Hitchens. Knowing Hitchens, I’m sure he’d approve.
[…]
.
After his talk, I took Hitchens aside and asked him why he didn’t feel the same way about the other religious fundamentalist regime in Palestine: Zionism. If he was so concerned about Hamas’s religious fundamentalism, why was he silent about the religious fundamentalism that is driving millions of Palestinians out of their homes, occupying their land and denying them freedom because of their religion? Shouldn’t America deal with Jewish fundamentalism in the same way he wants it to deal with Islamic fundamentalism?
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For once, I saw him flustered and speechless. It was clear he genuinely had not thought of this and now he felt thoroughly embarrassed. He smiled, looked around, tried to find something to say, but came up with nothing. He then tried to ignore me by going back to his comfort zone and engaging in a shouting match with a Muslim and calling him a “####ing peasant.” (That man was Ashraf Laidi, a currency trader and author whose CV indicates he’s never really been a peasant.) I asked Hitchens if he’d make my point in his next talk about Palestine/Israel, and again, he had nothing to say. I ended with: “well, either tell me why I’m wrong or admit you’re wrong and that in your next speech you’ll denounce Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism in the same way.” The stupid smirk left his face, and he walked away.
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This was post-2001 Hitchens. The over-riding directive of his life was to make money by pleasing American right-wingers by dressing up their idiotic nationalism, chauvinism, and jingoism with Big Words and an English accent. It was a highly rewarding career, because he sold to morons who watch Sean Hannity the illusion that they are not complete cretins, and they pay top dime for that sort of intellectual deceit.
[…]
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Christopher Hitchens’ ‘Fundamentalist’ Exemption for Zionism
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-fundamentalist-exemption-for-zionism/
“The world will undoubtedly be a duller place without Christopher Hitchens. Oh, and a better one too.”
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(It is with truly great sadness that I have to write the next sentence about another human being.)….I have to concur with the last five words above.
Well said Craig, and so true. Again, you hit the nail on the head. I am awaiting your future piece on Cameron which I very much hope is in preparation.
Hitchens discription of Mother Theresa who did more good than he could imagine
“A lying thieving Albanian dwarf”. The world is better without him.
“Stephen, piss and wind, as I suggested.”
John Goss – infantile as i said.
Moderator
Has my post below (first sent in this morning) offended against one of this website’s rules? Is one not allowed to imitate Punch’s young curate and find something good to say about bad egg Hitchens? [I’ve altered one figurative expression in case it might have led to Cameron suing Craig, or me; and I have removed one link, in case only one is allowed per comment.]
Suhayl:
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“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?
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 Union Jack. 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”.
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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 brown-nosing the rich 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:
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“ 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)
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“Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.” (Deuteronomy 1v: 26)
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“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)
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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 willingly submit to for the public interest in the experiment of being governed by pure prigs, rather than by Cameroonian moneyed hypocrites and prigs.
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*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.
“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.”
I am not in the game of two wrongs make a right – I have no problems in acknowledging that Israel , Saudi, Bahrain, Uzbekistan, the Palestinian Authority (oh yes they have their own Amnesty International report as well) have all committed human rights abuses. Whether they are far worse than Iran’s is debateable – but is still not a reason for ignoring Iran. Don’t you think that only sensible approach is to work for proper international institutions that stand up to all abuses of human rights by totalitarian regimes rather than trying to pick and chose favourites? If you think that allowing Iran to become a nuclear power will make it any easier to control Israel’s nuclear threat you are clearly not dealing with reality.
Hi Craig
I think you’ll enjoy this link. Anyone who thinks YOU were being harsh on Hitchins ought to steer well clear of it though…
http://exiledonline.com/who-can-forget-christopher-hitchens-fake-waterboarding-stunt/
Hitchens had the right to his opinions and justified them better than most of us, even as we may not have shared all of them.
I happen to think he was spot on about the Clintons and Mother Teresa, and pretty good on atheism and against religious fundamentalism.
But I like to remember him best from a C span talk I happened upon at some local journalism award ceremony where he spoke inspiringly of the importance of alert local reporting, using the example of US reporters who had discovered that their military base was being used for training foreign military in interrogation techniques. Their reporting was important.
Hitchens was courageous, articulate and right about a lot. What a pity about the smoking and drinking!
“two wrong do not make it right” in that case, let’s go and invade them all,or is it just because we do not like Iran and Syria we can treat them differently!
and yes in the absence of anyone even hinting that Israel should get rid of their nuclear weapons, I do believe Iran having it too will help to balance the power. As one of papers said once, “Israel concern is not that Iran will ever attack them, their concern is that if another country in the ME is nuclear, then they will not be able to call all the shots!). But all the same in previous comments I did not say Iran should have nuclear weapons, what I said was why is Iran under investigation but Israel is not , when it is know that they have it. Also I said since 1981, in the west it has been claimed that Iran is one step away from making a bomb, so please do not twist my words.
Might I suggest that one reason that Saifedean Ammous was rebuffed by Hitchens on the claim that he did not address Zionism is that it simply isn’t true and it is pretty ridiculous to claim otherwise. If anyone bothered to look at what Hitchens’s actually wrote they will see that this is not the case. I could give many references both pre and post 2001 – but his 2002 Vanity Fair essay on Jewsih Power, Jewish Peril will perhaps demonstrate the range and depth of Hitchen’s thinking on Zionism.
I’m sorry Mary much as you might wish the Hitch will not fit into your two dimensional view of the world.
Macky
“His very opposition to Religion in general in itself is Islamophobic by definition”
This really is a ridiculous argument – one can oppose something in many ways e.g. by logic, reason, belief/moral code, evidence without resorting to phobia. Many here oppose me in general but I wouldn’t say that all of them have an irrational phobia of me!
Angrysoba,
as you refuse to read the original article in VT, presumably to avoid having to take another shower, you obviously do not understand what I meant.
As your pseudonym and comments suggest, you seem to have obvious difficulty understanding satire. You may be surprised to hear that this is a common symptom of an onset of a serious neurological condition. Well, be happy and get angry sob.
Passerby
If you think I want to ignore the abuses of the Israeli govt and some settlers you are totally wrong. But if you think they from a valid argument for ignoring those of the Iranian regime you are really employing a perverted set of moral values.
Stephen, As you seemed not to be averse to attacking Iran/imposing further sanctions , I just simply wanted to know on what grounds you justified that position
1) HR abuses (in that case, lets invade Uzbekistan first, if you read HRW or Amnesty’s various reports
2) Nuclear weapons, in which case we should tell Israel, India, to get rid of theirs or we will attack them, (as we are already causing mayhem in Pakistani, I will leave that one out).
I would be interested to know!
“As your pseudonym and comments suggest, you seem to have obvious difficulty understanding satire. You may be surprised to hear that this is a common symptom of an onset of a serious neurological condition. Well, be happy and get angry sob.”
Comments like this are a symptom of a common condition called being a nasty little prat.
Coming out like bullets from an IDF automatic tonight.
Moderator
I’ve been trying to post a comment since this morning. The latest message that flashed up instantly was, as earlier, “Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!” However, the comment has still not appeared. I’m not aware of any rules that it offends. Is there a technical glitch? Should I post it again?
Azra
I am averse to attacking Iran – and have already said so. I would justify other actions against Iran and others based on abuses of the UN Charter of Human Rights – what actions, when and how is dependent on what is likley to be the most effective in stopping the abuse, what those most affected want and by what is achievable. First point you have to get to is in acknowledging that an abuse has occurred – then you can start to try and deal with the problem. At the moment we are in a silly game where one set of human rights abusers seeks to justify trheri position by pointing to someone elses abuses.
Stephen, I am not justifying HR abuses in Iran, far from it. I have close family members who have been tortured at the hands of both regime, Pahlavi as well as the Mullahs, the point us am making is that sanction has never been effective, it was not effective in South Africa, and it is not effective in Iran (except hurting the very same people, west is claiming to want to help),what more , it has strenghten the position of Mullahs.All the same, my fuming is at the Hypocrisy of the west. Why imposing sanction on Iran, and not other countries with the same or even worse HR abuses? or with same nuclear issues, is it because the government of Iran is not hand picked by the west?
Azra
I am not in the game of two wrongs make a right – I have no problems in acknowledging that Israel , Saudi, Bahrain, Uzbekistan, the Palestinian Authority (oh yes they have their own Amnesty International report as well) have all committed human rights abuses. Whether they are far worse than Iran’s is debateable – but is still not a reason for ignoring Iran.
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So the baby killing, grandma bombing, concentration camp owning, apartheid system Isreal is not all that bad in HR, imprisoning children and torturing them is only good HR record .
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What is wrong with this hate filled wanker who can discount so much and conclude; Iran is the worst? It is suffering from ziofuckwitry syndrome, a disease with no known cure.
Karel 911 conspiracy is a favourite subject of angrysobas – he has even recalled going to a conference to check it out. Numerous commentors, sophisticated and less so, have tried to engage with him on the subject and he jumps on it and whoever/whenever it crops up. I have never seen him take it seriously – it looks like its sport to him. There is no point in getting into namecalling, that is sport to that type too.
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iirc Craig has never commented in any depth on 911 conspiracy, just briefly washed his hands of it and ushered it into a single thread. Many commenters here believe it was a black OP and that 7/7 was likely one too, Lockerbie, and the assasination of Robin Cook and David Kelly… the list goes on. I dont recall Craigs position on all of these, his focuses are elsewhere mostly but iirc he thinks David Kelly was killed, and of course someone tried to assasinate Craig and almost did kill him in Uzbekistan.
Iain Orr – The spam filter is apparently a law unto itself and looses posts. Post again with a little change, an extra comma or whatever, and I believe Jon or other mods will remove obvious duplicates when they come across them.
Azra
So what is effective do nothing and wait? One problem with that approach is that it actually leaves much of the debate open to those who see war as the answer. Do you really think that there should be no restrictions whatsover on the sale of miltary/torture equipment to the Iranian regime?
Fedup
When you end up putting words in the mouth of someone you view as a ziofuckwit – perhaps you should give up and try something a little less taxing.