The Staggers

The New Statesman’s rolling politics blog

Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

A tribute to a brilliant essayist, orator and wit.

By George Eaton Published 16 December 2011 6:40

A young Christopher Hitchens outside the offices of the New Statesman, where he was hired in 1973. Photograph: Rex Features.

"I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me," wrote Christoper Hitchens in his most recent essay. But today, after 18 months, his duel with cancer ended. He was 62 years old. The world has lost one of its most outstanding and prolific journalists and a wonderful polemicist, orator and bon vivant. Hitchens could write brilliantly about an extraordinarily wide range of subjects and people: the death penalty, religion, Leon Trotsky, Evelyn Waugh, the British monarchy, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, George Orwell, Saul Bellow, the Elgin Marbles, North Korea, the Balkans, Henry Kissinger, Thomas Paine and Philip Larkin.

In recent months, we had sad cause to add cancer to that list. The series of essays Hitchens wrote for Vanity Fair about his illness stands as the finest writing on the subject since John Diamond's C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too. Without a hint of self-pity or sentimentality, Hitchens confronted his fate with pure reason and logic. "To the dumb question, 'Why me?' " he wrote, "the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: 'Why not?' " Nor did his humour desert him. To a Christian who insisted that God had given him "throat" cancer in order to punish the "one part of his body he used for blasphemy", he replied: "My so-far uncancerous throat . . . is not at all the only organ with which I have blasphemed." And to those who insultingly suggested that he should embrace religion, Hitchens's flawless riposte: "Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally ill and urged them to adopt atheism: 'Don't be a mug all your life. Make your last days the best ones.' People might suppose this was in poor taste."

I interviewed Hitchens for the New Statesman in May 2010 during the UK leg of his Hitch-22 tour. Over several glasses of Pinot Noir and Johnnie Walker Black Label, we discussed, among other things, religion, neoconservatism ("I'm not a conservative of any kind"), his time at the NS, Zimbabwe (his biggest regret was that he hadn't been tougher on Mugabe in the 1980s) and the euro. Hitch was on form that day, calmly eviscerating the likes of David Cameron ("He seems content-free to me. Never had a job, except in PR, and it shows. People ask, 'What do you think of him?' and my answer is: 'He doesn't make me think' ") and Sarah Palin ("I think she's a completely straightforward cynic and opportunist and I think she's cashing out . . . She's made a fortune and she'll make another. But she's not actually going to do the hard work of trying to lead or build a movement"). Two days later he returned to the US. A month later he was diagnosed with cancer. He never returned to the country of his birth.

It was the United States, where Hitchens lived for more than 30 years, that he came to call home. By the end of the 1970s, he had tired of Britain ("Weimar without the sex", was his verdict on the Callaghan era) and longed for the bigger stage of America, moving first to New York and later to Washington, DC. He struggled at first, eking out a living writing a biweekly column for the Nation magazine and relying on the kindness of friends such as the radical journalist Andrew Cockburn. But the move paid off when he landed a column for Vanity Fair in 1992, greatly increasing his income and his readership. It was also there that he met his adoring second wife, Carol Blue, who once remarked of him: "I was just glad such a person existed in the world." He is survived by Blue, their daughter, Antonia, and two children from his previous marriage to Eleni Meleagrou, Alexander and Sophia.

"I believe in America. America has made my fortune," declares Bonasera in the opening line of The Godfather. Hitchens's allegiance to the US (he became a citizen in 2007) had more to do with its secular constitution and its commitment to free expression but America did make his fortune. By the end of his life, with regular slots in Vanity Fair, the Atlantic and Slate, several bestselling books and a lucrative place on the lecture circuit, Hitchens was earning nearly $1m a year.

His extraordinary output – 12 books, five collections of essays – was suggestive of a solitary, bookish man, rather than a compulsively social hedonist. In resolving this apparent paradox, Hitchens was aided by two attributes in particular: his prodigious memory (as Ian McEwan once remarked: "It all seems instantly, neurologically available: everything he's ever read, everyone he's ever met, every story he's ever heard") and his ability to write at a speed that most people talk. The late, great Anthony Howard, who as New Statesman editor hired Hitchens in 1973, told me last year: "He was a very quick writer . . . Hitch could produce a front-page leader, which would take me a couple of hours, in half an hour."

In his final interview, with Richard Dawkins (published in the current issue of the NS), Hitchens reflected, with touching modesty, on his status as an essayist. After Dawkins told him that he could think of no one since Aldous Huxley who was so well read, he replied:

It may strike some people as being broad but it's possibly at the cost of being a bit shallow. I became a journalist because one didn't have to specialise. I remember once going to an evening with Umberto Eco talking to Susan Sontag and the definition of the word "polymath" came up. Eco said it was his ambition to be a polymath; Sontag challenged him and said the definition of a polymath is someone who's interested in everything and nothing else. I was encouraged in my training to read widely – to flit and sip, as Bertie [Wooster] puts it – and I think I've got good memory retention. I retain what's interesting to me, but I don't have a lot of strategic depth.

A lot of reviewers have said, to the point of embarrassing me, that I'm in the class of Edmund Wilson or even George Orwell. It really does remind me that I'm not. But it's something to at least have had the comparison made – it's better than I expected when I started.

Hitchens's modesty was unwarranted. In this age of high specialisation, we will not see his like again.

It was God Is Not Great, his anti-theist polemic, that sent him supernova. While Dawkins's atheism is rooted in science, Hitchens's was rooted in morality. He was repelled by the notion that people do good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward. The question he often posed about believers was: "Why do they wish this was true?" Heaven, for Hitchens, was a place of "endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea".

It is Hitch the controversialist that many will remember. The man who said of Jerry Falwell, "If you gave Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox," and of Ronald Reagan: "Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife." But as John Gray wrote in his NS review of Hitchens's fifth and final collection of essays, Arguably, he was no mere provocateur or contrarian. Throughout his career, Hitchens retained a commitment to the Enlightenment values of reason, secularism and pluralism. His targets – Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, God – were chosen not at random, but rather because they had offended one or more of these principles.

Over the past decade, many on the left came to regard Hitchens not as a friend but as an enemy. Tariq Ali, a fellow soixante-huitard, wrote: "On 11 September 2001, a small group of terrorists crashed the planes they had hijacked into the Twin Towers of New York. Among the casualties, although unreported that week, was a middle-aged Nation columnist called Christopher Hitchens. He was never seen again . . . The vile replica currently on offer is a double." And yet, contrary to reports, Hitchens did not perform a crude midlife swerve from left to right (also known as doing a "Paul Johnson"). Unlike Johnson, a former New Statesman editor who became a reactionary conservative ("Pinochet remains a hero to me," he wrote in 2007), Hitchens did not give up everything he believed in. He maintained, for instance, that the US invasion of Vietnam was a war crime, that Kissinger belonged behind bars (see his 2001 book The Trial of Henry Kissinger for a full account of the former US secretary of state's "one-man rolling crime wave") and that the Israeli occupation of Palestine was a moral and political scandal.

His support for the "war on terror" was premised not on conservative notions but on liberal principles. As he wrote in a column for the Nation published on 20 September 2001, "What they [the 9/11 attackers] abominate about 'the west', to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state."

He was wrong, badly wrong about Iraq, but for the best of reasons. His support for the invasion arose out of a long-standing solidarity with the country's Kurds (see his long, 1992 piece for National Geographic, "The Struggle of the Kurds", collected in Love, Poverty and War) and his belief that even war was preferable to the survival of Saddam Hussein's totalitarian regime ("a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave beneath it"). It was not an attempt to ingratiate himself with the neoconservatives, whom Hitchens had fought and continued to fight with on issues from gay rights to the death penalty to Israel. But he was too casual in dismissing the civilian casualties (estimated at anything between 100,000 and a million) that resulted directly or indirectly from the invasion of the Iraq and, as he later conceded, too optimistic about the Bush administration's ability to stabilise the country. In his boisterous advocacy of the war there was more than a hint of the Marxist belief in the necessity of violence in order for history to progress. As Lenin once grimly phrased it, "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."

Yet those who stopped reading Hitchens after 11 September 2001 are all the poorer for it. They have not read his haunting account of the US's deadly legacy in Vietnam: "Some of the victims of Agent Orange haven't even been born yet, and if that reflection doesn't shake you, then my words have been feeble and not even the photographs will do." Or his unrivalled indictment of capital punishment: "Once you institute the penalty, the bureaucratic machinery of death develops its own logic, and the system can be relied on to spare the beast-man, say, on a technicality of insanity, while executing the hapless Texan indigent who wasn't able to find a conscientious attorney." Or his unique denunciation of waterboarding: "I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."

The tragedy of Hitchens's illness was that it came at a time when he was enjoying a larger audience than ever. Of his tight circle of friends – Martin Amis, James Fenton, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie – he was the last to gain international renown, yet he is now read more widely than any of them.

In his later years, Hitchens was fond of quoting his late mother's assertion that "the one unforgivable sin is to be boring". Today, as I realise I will never hear that resonant baritone again, that Hitchens's mighty pen is still, I feel certain in saying that the world has become a more boring place.

Tags: Christopher Hitchens

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93 comments

Thu, 2011-12-22 16:35 — Ian5

I'm not holding my breath, he didn't come back with anything in regards the Bengal Famine of WWII, and Gahandi's co-operation with the Japanese. Did it have something to do with the bulk of the Bengal population being Muslim? and he a simple Hindu? Where the effects of the famine not in great part due to Burma being in Japan's hands, when historically it had been the source of rice in times of shortage.. Did the Japanese provide food for the starving? There had been a famine in 1940 that had been dealt with, the only change was the invasion of Burma in 1942.

Fri, 2011-12-16 23:19 — rick (not verified)

to jerry, thank you for so perfectly providing creedence to every word uttered by Christopher Hitchens and his like. These people provide reason and argument for their views, but you Jerry, you have nothing but the vile rubbish indoctrinated into your "soul" by others. I'll miss you Chris, and Etta - i'll always be thinking of you.

Sun, 2011-12-18 10:53 — jankaas (not verified)

"More false, pejorative, ad hominem abuse above plus obfuscatory falsehood that is the more obnoxious for being made with the courage of anonymity."

there's quite some irony in that statement since you don't mention any names....

and on the work of Hitchens, i am also of the opinion that he was not perfect. he did get things wrong, specifically his support for the war in/on Iraq. imho one can only ever justify going to war to defend your territory. the rest is just dancing on the head of a pin, which Hitchens had to do once matters in Iraq went totally out of control, as they were bound to. that was a foregone conclusion.

but on persons such as Kissinger and Mother Teresa, i think he opened many eyes, and that is the value of someone willing to analyse reality. even if they do so from the comfort of their study.

Sun, 2011-12-18 12:55 — Ian5

Jankaas, have to disagree about war. I think Iraq war or least ways regime removal was correct. Maybe basically right war, wrong time wrong espoused reasons. I think the international community does not take positive action fast enough and with enough resolve. So though as a member of a nation I will agree with the concept of defence of sovereign territory , I think action in support of am oppressed people is justified, Bosnia , Darfur etc. For me the reports of the gassings in Halabja was sufficient justification for international action.

Fri, 2011-12-16 07:20 — Jerry Frey (not verified)

Hitchens used to more interesting when he was a pseudo-liberal criticizing Clinton.

Presumably, now he is no longer atheist.

For POSITIVE Facts about Christianity, pls visit:

http://napoleonlive.info/judas-the-galilean-and-his-unterbrink-books/

Fri, 2011-12-16 07:48 — reddeviljp

A great loss to the world of journalism and his friends. RIP Mr Hitch.
PS - he resisted the call of the god-botherers to his dying breath, I read. Well done.

Fri, 2011-12-16 08:00 — Blaine McCartney (not verified)

@Jerry

Though evidently, you're presumably still a fool. Typical Christians peddling their deathbed conversion rumours, don't listen to a word of it! Hitchens; an atheist to the end, and one that we are proud of

Fri, 2011-12-16 08:08 — Marjorie Armstrong (not verified)

NEVER boring......rereading to hear the voice and saddened that there will be no more from him. He was a journalist you could put on a pedestal and a man with a mission which certainly will live on.

Sat, 2011-12-17 02:13 — Natalie E (not verified)

THe world is now less safe than it was yesterday - there is no one who can take it up to the mindless 'joe public's who think there's nothing 'wrong' with religion. Christopher H had an intellect and insight unrivalled - he took no prisoners. What it would've been like to spend time in his presence... I'm devastated his time here was cut so short, we needed - and need - him so badly. bravo Christopher, you are my hero. xxx

Fri, 2011-12-16 08:16 — Elpenor Dignam (not verified)

Couldn't forgive his stanch on Iraq, for giving cover to Empire nor was I partial to his atheism entertaining though it was, nevertheless I could never avoid an article of his - he will be missed. R.I.P.

Fri, 2011-12-16 08:31 — TruthOutspoken (not verified)

Mr Hitchens was a yoyo expert.
He had a talent to keep himself in the media limelight by talking 'rotten' about whomever was around at that time.
From left wing to right wing.
From outright criticizin¬g Mother Teresa to Mr Kissinger.
Did his thoughts/ views/ opinions change the world. NO.
He was a sensationa¬list akin today- to Kim Karadashia¬n without the brain.
He got paid well. He got US citizenshi¬p. He got access to MSM jobs.
He served himself & his backers very well.
Sadly, there are many in the MSM - who follow his business model and are fairly successful - called ' think-tank experts', pundits, and serve their vested interests well.

Fri, 2011-12-16 08:54 — Heath (not verified)

@Jerry Typical Christian grave dancing, thrusting your fairy tale beliefs on a man who stood strong against theistic nonsense in favor of logic, reason, and rationality. You insult the man and all that he championed with your pious rhetoric on the day of his death. For once, can you mindless Christians not impose your nonsensical dogma on those who want nothing to do with it, whether they are living or otherwise?

Fri, 2011-12-16 10:54 — A******* (not verified)

Well done New Statesman for giving Hitch a decent write-up. Anything else in the press right now is pretty lightweight.

Sun, 2011-12-18 15:15 — jankaas (not verified)

"Jankaas, have to disagree about war."

fair enough. but let's see why;

" I think Iraq war or least ways regime removal was correct."

i don't accept this is best done by invasion. going to war should be the very last step one nation ever takes against another. and as i said before it should only be to defend one's own territories.

yes Saddam was a terrible son of a b****, who murdered and tortured his own people. and worse for us we provided him with equipment for decades allowing him to achieve this end more effectively. that is also wrong. but the war was illegal, that much we have established under international law;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/12/iraq-invasion-violated-inter...

(and even if you believe other experts found differently, we should agree that the argument for this invasion were far from clear cut. and it should be when so much is at stake, no?)

the only acceptable, and imho civilised, way to deal with dictators and totalitarian regimes is to refuse to trade with them. i can't think of a single armed conflict since WWII where we can seriously claim to have got it right. from the Falklands to Desert Storm to Operation Iraqi Liberation (oops!), it has been an embarrassment. and the resulting human cost is unacceptable.

it is as if we have learned nothing from history, and as if all those lives are a mere irrelevance.

Sun, 2011-12-18 15:21 — jankaas (not verified)

"this website is not allowing me to post"

Kieran, i have found that at times when i try and include some copy/paste text i can't post at all either. maybe that's the issue for you also?

anyway, as Ian and myself have told hartymcfly, epigenetic changes are not able to circumvent Natural Selection, so MES is not undermined. no idea if he'll ever respond to this truism.

Fri, 2011-12-16 09:43 — Willp

So who has died? A millionaire cheerleader for Bush and Blair.
A warmonger. A traitor to Britain and to socialism.

Fri, 2011-12-16 09:49 — Sean (not verified)

"It was not an attempt to ingratiate himself with the neoconservatives, who Hitchens had fought with and continued to fight with on issues from gay rights"

Can you name me one neo-con who has a problem with gay rights? Or do you just se the term to describe anyone on the right?

Fri, 2011-12-16 10:00 — Stephen (not verified)

Any traitor to socialism is a friend of mine.

Sat, 2011-12-17 06:37 — RRT (not verified)

Another "Jerry F"? Ok - "F" off then!

Fri, 2011-12-16 10:26 — David (not verified)

I am incredibly saddened by the thought that I will never read his thoughts or hear him debate with his unique skill again.

Sun, 2011-12-18 16:36 — Ian5

Jankaas, agree the war was illegal, and possibly tightly enforced sanctions may, have brought down a regime, but I will not personally rule out invading or intervening in a state that commits the level of crime that Saddam committed against innocents. To me the problem lies in a frequently impotent UN.

Fri, 2011-12-16 11:03 — Mwales (not verified)

I always find it ironic that many of the people who criticised him for betraying the left also gave support for Regimes such as Iran and Syria which only survive due the oppression of the people.

He will be greatly missed, and I do hope the Christian peddler above drowns in his own bile before too long.

Fri, 2011-12-16 11:05 — betterdeadthanred (not verified)

How quickly the pygmies are to beat up the corpse of the dead giant.

Sat, 2011-12-17 10:25 — jankaas (not verified)

"what's this got to do with God?"

quite. i'm all ears too. so what's the deal hartymcfly?

(just a humble Bsc Biology for me btw)

Fri, 2011-12-16 11:09 — Freeman2

I found myself disagreeing with him more and more - but it was always worth taking the trouble to find out what he was thinking and to admire the way he expressed his thoughts. Without being sentimental, it does feel that another light has gone out.

Fri, 2011-12-16 11:24 — The Gadflyista (not verified)

Farewell, Christopher Hitchens. Every sophist and charlatan here on earth is today breathing a sigh of relief. And as for God, if you should stumble upon him cowering in some darkened corner of the cosmos, I've the confidence you're the man who can once-and-for-all argue him out of existence.

Sun, 2011-12-18 17:11 — jankaas (not verified)

"I will not personally rule out invading or intervening in a state that commits the level of crime that Saddam committed against innocents."

which surely would mean we would currently have to be at war in about half a dozen locations? North Korea, Israel, Syria, Zimbabwe, Somalia...... jezus the list just writes itself!

and, in our not too distant past we would have been invaded to ensure we were less brutal and dictatorial to our own populations. clearly hypothetical since there was no-one powerful enough. but the point being that it is easy to think 'we' know what's 'best' for others, when in reality we must not physically join the fray.

it never ever works out how we imagined.

"To me the problem lies in a frequently impotent UN."

so we should work to strengthen it, which i accept is a huge task, but it is our only hope. war is not the answer, invasion does not resolve local issues.

Fri, 2011-12-16 11:42 — Beth Johnson (not verified)

He asked me what I thought was the biggest obstacle in the Black community with regard to social justice and progress. I said, without hesitation, religion.

And he looked at me for a minute and told me join him at a party he and his wife were having @ his home @ The Wyoming. I said I wouldn't fit in. He told me, he knew as much, but I was the most interesting African-American woman he had encountered in a while and he thought I should be among friends for a spell. So I went. I ended up having a good time and meeting very cool people who were bawdy, intellectual, and pretty down to Earth. And of course drank like fish. LOL!

I liked him very much and I will miss him.

PS - And many thanks for coming to our small gathering of AAA in Washington DC a while back. It meant a lot to us. It gave us hope and we felt vindicated, respected, supported, and loved. YUP - LOVED!

Fri, 2011-12-16 11:45 — Martin (not verified)

I've only relatively recently discovered Hitchens and his fantastic writing style through god Is Not Great, the Portable Atheist, and his wonderfully clear and brute youtube Hitchslap-video's.
I'd like to wish farewell to him via this message, because he helped me to develop my disrespect for all religion through clear and undeniable truths and argumentation. I dislike the idea that he is no longer among us to bombard religious superstition with much-needed undeniable arguments.
It's a strange coincidence to have received Hitch-22 on December 15th.
Greetings from the Netherlands.

Fri, 2011-12-16 12:06 — sdb412 (not verified)

Thank you Christopher for your service and work. You are irreplaceable and mankind is indebted to you. You will be missed more than I can explain. My condolences to your family and friends.

Sat, 2011-12-17 11:57 — Alex Baldwin (not verified)

Hitchens always reminded me of Milton's Satan, in the nicest possible way:

"That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power,
Who from the terror of this arm so late
Doubted his empire, that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since by fate the strength of gods
And this empyreal substance cannot fail,
Since through experience of this great event
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war
Irreconcilable, to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven."

Tue, 2011-12-20 15:17 — Ian5

Polya, stop with the self promotion. Irving denies the Nazi holocaust, when he speaks of violence he's not talking of organised gassing, hangings, shootings etc. He's blaming the camp inmates for their own deaths from disease and inmate violence and the deprivations of war.

Strange, not the same death rates in POW camps, or normal prisons, I wonder why?

Hoss himself attested to the vast numbers killed in gas chambers.

Put it anyway you like , the scum bad Irving denies the final solution.

Sat, 2011-12-17 12:40 — Dan Brown (not verified)

how he views Stalin’s exactly parallel treatment of the same people in Soviet Central Asia at the same time, almost identical — ceremonies in which veils were burned in the public square, mullahs were indeed shot.

- Now, because that was done by Stalin —

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Only language they understood.
PETER HITCHENS: — was that bad, or was it OK?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Fine.
PETER HITCHENS: Right, OK. I’d like to have that settled. You’re never asked anything like enough about your attitude towards the Soviet Revolution, but —
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Fine, I’m long overdue. People will be nostalgic for it before long.
PETER HITCHENS: I’ll bear that in mind.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yeah, they will. Wait and see

http://christopherhitchenswatch.blogspot.com/2010/11/only-language-they-...

Fri, 2011-12-16 12:40 — Resistor (not verified)

“It is a shame that there isn’t a hell for him to go to. We have been rid of an extremely dangerous demagogue who lived by hatred of others and prejudice.”

This is what Hitchens wrote about Jerry Falwell, now we can say it of him.

Fri, 2011-12-16 12:47 — Hary (not verified)

George. Lovely piece about the great man.

Harry Cockburn

Fri, 2011-12-16 13:13 — LanguedocFox (not verified)

The last sentence in this wonderful obituary almost says it all. Yes, "the world has become a more boring place", and it's also become much less interesting. I can't think of a single writer who can match his wit, intelligence, incisiveness and sheer style. He will be sorely missed.

Fri, 2011-12-16 13:23 — Ian5

Never met the man, I only know him from his writings and recently thanks to youtube his debates. He managed to articulate what I felt on many points in regards religion and and other social ills.

He will be missed.

Rsistor, glad to see you agree there is no hell, but if there were ,considering the people Christianity would consign there, I'm sure Hitch would be among friends and made to feel welcome. Heck Satan himself should be rolling out the red carpet.

If there is a heaven, then St Peter will be quaking now, cause sure as eggs is eggs Hitch will be condemning that regime.

Fri, 2011-12-16 13:30 — jankaas (not verified)

my sincere condolences to his family. i have been a fan of Christopher for many many years, despite not always agreeing with his postion.

he has enriched my life enormously, and I will always view him as a fellow believer in The Dury Trinity;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJjM9lr8nys

Sat, 2011-12-17 14:03 — Ian5

Heck as only a lowly zoologist, could somebody please point me to this earth shattering discovery in molecular biology that proves god exists...Or is it a discovery in cosmology considering expanding universe was mentioned in the same breath.

hitch said more than once the "religion is the enemy" too right Sir, it should be fought on all fronts and in all its guises.

I especially like Laura Mersini-Houghton's Big Bang work...it kind of stuffs William Lane Craig and his Kalam thought experiment. Still he knows god exists because he can feel him inside!!! and therefore gives him absolute morals...far superior ones it seems to my basic atheist ones.

Thanks Hitch for thinking.

Fri, 2011-12-16 13:33 — jankaas (not verified)

@Resistor

"This is what Hitchens wrote about Jerry Falwell, now we can say it of him."

you can say what you want, he really can't hear you.....

Sat, 2011-12-17 14:49 — Gideon Polya

Christopher Hitchens must be remembered in particular for the "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" that attributed 8 million Laotian, Cambodian , Vietnamese and Bengali deaths to this vile warmonger but likewise cannot be forgiven for his support for the Iraq War that has been associated since 2003 with 2.7 million war-related deaths, 1.5 million violent deaths (see Just Foreign Policy": http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq ), 1.2 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation, 5-6 million refugees, and 0.8 million under-5 infant deaths (90% avoidable and due to gross US Alliance violation of the Geneva Convention). Indeed Iraqi war-related dead since 1990 total 4.6 million, including 1.7 million violent deaths, 2.9 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation and 2.0 million under-5 infants deaths - 2.0 million children each robbed of the circa 60 years of life enjoyed by war-advocate Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens was not the only person who was, to quote George Eaton, "too casual in dismissing the civilian casualties (estimated at anything between 100,000 and a million)". Thus the taxpayer-funded Australian ABC (the Australian equivalent of the UK BBC) in reporting the American withdrawal stated "The withdrawal ends a war that left tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,500 American soldiers dead" (for analysis see "US Withdraws & Australian ABC Censors 4.6 million Iraqi Holocaust War Dead", Countercurrents: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya161211.htm ). The Iraqi Genocide-complicit, Iraqi Genocide ignoring, Iraqi Genocide denying, Iraqi Holocaust-complicit, Iraqi Holocaust ignoring and Iraqi Holocaust denying ABC under-reported Iraq war dead by a factor of several hundred.

By way of comparison, David Irving has variously estimated that 3 million Jews died from deprivation and disease in concentration camps (see: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/australia/2gb-transcrip...)
and that over 2.5 million were violently killed in Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka (see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/sep/29/secondworldwar.highereducation ) , as compared to Professor Sir Martin Gilbert's estimates of 5-6 million deaths with 1 in 6 dying from deprivation.

Sir Martin Gilbert has been an apologist for the British in the WW2 Bengal Famine, asserting that 1.5 million died whereas an expert medical historian estimate is that 6-7 million Indians were deliberately starved to death by the British in the WW2 Bengali Holocaust, the first WW2 atrocity to have been described in a book as a "holocaust" (by N.G. Jog in 1944). Gilbert, like Hitchens, supported the Iraq War and one wonders what estimate of Iraqi war deaths will be made by the Chilcot Inquiry of which Gilbert is a member.

Tue, 2011-12-20 17:19 — Willp

It's not necessary to quote the discredited Nazi apologist David Irving. Even Raul Hilberg, the most respected historian of Hitler's genocide of the Jews, refers to possibly 5 million dead. But nobody, not Ian (in his vilely abusive email of 17 Dec) nor anyone else, has disproved Gideon Polya's figures of deaths in Iraq.
Hitchens' attacks on the Lancet epidemiologists were a disgrace, but then he had to smear the facts about the war, to earn his millions from the war-supporting US mass media.

Sat, 2011-12-17 15:39 — Ian5

Scum bag, Polya, do they really let you educate people in OZ..?

you consider David Irving a reliable source, Go back to your class room and stop peddling your second rate pseudo history books.

Scum like you are Happy to allow vile creatures like Saddam and his baa'thist regime stay in place and slowly eradicate Kurds, and Marsh Arabs. You missed the death toll from the Saddam initiated Iran-Iraq war out .

Want to blame somebody for the Bengal Famine deaths go try GOD, isn't he in charge of weather, or maybe howabout the nice man Ghandi colluding with the Japanese and prevented rice stocks from Burma being brought in... you do know who the Japanese are don't you? I mean they used the tactics in Manchuria that our friend Saddam used at Halabja , good old Unit 731. Anybody that uses or relies on people like Irving as a source is going to get short thrift for me at least. To quote from the Irving interview you linked too: I think, like any scientist, I'd have to give you a range of figures and I'd have to say a minimum of one million, which is a monstrous crime, and a maximum of about four million, depending on what you mean by killed. If putting people into a concentration camps where they die of barbarity and typhus and epidemics is killing then I would say the four million figure because, undoubtedly, huge numbers did die in the camps in the conditions that were very evident at the end of the war"

But notice no gas chambers and no exterminations, thats all fabrication...Despite of course the testimony of many SS about such things. By killed I mean being shot, or gassed, or hung or beaten to death or savaged by dogs.

Tue, 2011-12-20 17:40 — Ian5

Willp: ah but Poyla does quote Irving as proof, its not the number dead is it, its the method and Irving refuses to acknowledge the "final solution".
to directly quote Irving" Pressed as to whether this change undermined his previous stance, Mr Irving replied: "It is a crystallisation of my view." Asked if he now accepts there had been a Holocaust against the Jewish people he said he was "not going to use their trade name". He added: "I do accept that the Nazis quite definitely, that Heinrich Himmler, organised and directed a programme, a clandestine programme, for the liquidation of European Jews ... and that in 1942-43 alone over 2.5 million Jews were killed in those three camps." He added that Hitler was "completely in the dark" about the programme" He also denies the facts about Auschwitz, despite Hoss and others being very clear on its use.
re; Iraq nobody not even Polya has proved his figures either...not even remotely close. The article he links to, actually reference's his own twisted figures..just take a look.

Polya cannot post on any subject without self promotion of his own dubious histories...

Yet another apologist for the Baa'thist regime.

Sat, 2011-12-17 16:19 — jankaas (not verified)

"With that he has no exclusivity when formulating these views as they bare no relation to his International scientific reputation."

and i feel that he damaged his scientific reputation almost to destruction, by insisting he has evidence his Christian God is causal in such things as the Big Bang, abiogenesis and evolution.

not making this up either. Collins said the following in his lecture at UC Berkeley in 2008;

Slide 1: "Almighty God, who is not limited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time."

Slide 2: "God's plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings."

Slide 3: "After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced 'house' (the human brain), God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the moral law), with free will, and with an immortal soul."

Slide 4: "We humans used our free will to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement."

Slide 5: "If the moral law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good or evil. It's all an illusion. We've been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially the strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?"

to his credit, Collins also tears apart Intelligent Design, Creationism and other science deniers, but his error is to shoehorn genuine scientific discoveries into his preferred religion. most unscientific imho. so i still don't get how you're so very impressed with this approach?

Sat, 2011-12-17 16:19 — Ian5

wel said Kieren, I find it strange that Jesus should lecture on waste and seed falling on stoney ground and his father should create billions of pointless galaxies in the universe, after all he only needed the sun and earth, oh and possibly the moon for a bit of tidal variety. Oh and he's going to knock us all off anyway as the Suns a bit resource limited!!!

Sat, 2011-12-17 16:25 — jankaas (not verified)

oopsy. just to correct myself Kieran, i should have left out that last sentence. it's not aimed at you. i realise you are not impressed by Collins' ontology. pls ignore it and forgive me... thanks

Fri, 2011-12-16 16:32 — Kinofrost (not verified)

It's a shame, in a way, there isn't an afterlife for Hitchens to look down on us from, so that he might smile at being as contentious, fire-inducing and interesting as he was in life. But I'd never wish him in a celestial dictatorship.

Sat, 2011-12-17 17:51 — hartymcfly (not verified)

My, my what a fantastic discussion.
Many of you have nailed your colours to the mast and I question my wisdom in even attempting to explain my point of view, but here goes:
You have become as doctrinaire and blinkered as the religious fanatics you despise. I accept that religion is destructive, but that does not preclude the existence of a Simple Attractor. I can almost hear the sucking of teeth as I make my next statement: Epigenetics undermines Darwin's Theory of Evolution. The true scientists amongst you will accept that theories are replaced over time (evolve?), but I imagine many of you expect 'On the Origin of Species' to remain sacrosanct for time immemorial? The fact that the environment can impact directly on phenotype and thus fitness and thus survival is a level of complexity we are only just beginning to grapple with. I'm sure you believe in all the Christian values other than the God bit anyway. So what are you so scared of? Call it Gaia, call it infinity, call it God, call it Colin, call it what you like. It's that bit that's bigger than all of us and no-one can state that it has no effect on us. Quite the opposite, there's increasing evidence that it does.
Seeing a gas cloud being drawn into the black hole at the centre of our universe (cf Time magazine) I'm sure fills us all with awe. May be we should just call it 'awe'?
Merry Christmas. Sayonara.

Sat, 2011-12-17 18:29 — Ian5

hartymcfly:Your epigentics and the effects thereof, where they selected for by natural selection..or did they exert an influence contrary to natural selection. Do both High and Low LG rat pups live, survive?

Sorry I'm too dim to see how they undermine Natural selection...

Keiren, dont forget WLC knows god exists because he feels him inside, so therefore all science must point to it blah blah blah.