Ever wanted to see Hitchens debating a religious fundamentalist? Now's your chance. Here he goes one-on-one with the odious Frank Turek. Another riveting debate.
During the discussion, Hitchens makes a fascinating, and highly persuasive, argument that I've never heard from him before. You know that mean ol' Soviet Union that wasn't a religion? Well, it so was a religion. The Pope has many divisions at his disposal.
A debate like this one, so fresh and engaging as this, just makes me wan.. want to... to...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
One of my favorite blogs is The Oil Drum (TOD), a pleasant and upbeat sort of place where they discuss the impending collapse of civilization as we know it. I don't want to go into all that just now, but on a thread I was reading today a denizen calling himself oldfarmermac made a comment that struck home with me, and which I think is pertinent to how the issue of how Theism-Atheism is too often debated these days. It should provide some food for thought for the less obnoxious among the various Brights, Brilliants and other Luminaries. One thing that occurred to me is that following mac's track leads the deliciously ironic possibility that the efforts of Christopher Hitchens and his fellow horsemen are, by virtue of their very assiduousness, actually reinforcing the very beliefs they are intended to undermine. Note that mac is coming from the non-theistic side of the ballpark, and is intent on saving modern society not from religion but from a catastrophic collapse due to a failure to wean ourselves off of unsustainably high energy consumption. So here goes:
Religions—we're stuck with them. Lord Chesterfield correctly said something to the effect that when men quit believing in God they do not henceforth believe in NOTHING—they just start believing in something else.
Some of those something elses might arguably be described as National Socialisn, communism, capitalism, nihilism,social Darwinianism.....
So as a practical matter perhaps we ought to be careful what we wish for—we might actually get it and it might be worse.
I tend to be rather sympathetic to the pious because (my own twisted version of this old saying) "but for the grace of God ....we are them".
I am not PC but I do understand the importance of treating everybody in a respectful and dignified way and it distresses me when otherwise very polite and responsible people unload on folks who —thru no fault of thier own—happen to believe is something that ain't so.
In this forum it probably really doesn't matter—it is not likely that many seriously pious folks read TOD—BUT IT IS A MAJOR MISTAKE to make fun of people's beliefs in more mainstream forums.
If I had to point out one single PARTICULAR reason why I don't have much faith in most popular liberal initiatives it would be that the average liberal grossly overestimates the general level of knowledge and mental sophistication of the man on the street.
She gets really bent out of shape when somebody calls her a broad or an addled female , and then she turns around and accuses half or more of the population of being ignorant superstitious louts.The TRUTH of the accusation is not the issue-not if the goal is to achieve change.The issue is that even a person who follows as well as he can the teachings of forbearence, turning the other cheek, etc, develops a lasting and deep seated antipathy towards you and what you stand for.
This my friends is NOT the way to convert people to your way of thinking.
For those who may remember some of my own anti religious rants—I am not yet THAT far gone—I just reserve the right unto myself to call my family and my ancestors and millions of others ignorant when I feel like it—in the same way that a black comedian can use the n word if he feels like it.
We all have to make our decisions the best way we can—which means relying on our own judgement when our knowledge is sufficient-and relying on the leadership and advice of others when it isn't.
The average person who takes his or her religion seriously lacks any significant understanding of the sciences, but he has at least a lyyman's grasp of the world of law, business, politics, and so forth.Being UNABLE (what part of unable do WE fail to understand?) to make sense of the arguments made in this or similar forums, he relies on the judgement and advice of whoever he percieves as his friends and allies.
You have lost him or her forever as an ally or convert as soon as you utter the words ignorant, superstitious, deluded....any place he will hear them.
Why are we suprised when he turns into a "rightwingnut?"
We need to seperate the message from the social commentary when we go out into the world and preach OUR message. Let us not be mistaken—there is no hope of EDUCATING the masses within the time frame available—they must be, if possible, gently lead to the correct conclusions by persausion—logic is inadequate.
Please—no one should interpret this rant in terms of feeling the need to apologize for hurting my feelings nor as a personal criticism coming from my direction.
All I'm trying to say is we should be a little more politically savvy.There is no need to go out of our way to furnish the Jerry Falwells of this world with ammo.
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The lesson of 2009: Those who gloat over past tradgedies are condemned to repeat them as farce
In yet another boring Slate article in what seems a lifetime of boring Slate articles on what could have been a fun topic—the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—Christopher complains about other people's boring articles and then starts dabbling in economics.
This 20th anniversary has seen yet another crop of boring articles about how so many people, especially in former East Germany, are supposedly "nostalgic" for the security of the old Stalinist system. Such sentimental piffle—which got a good airing in that irritating movie Good Bye Lenin!—would not long survive a reading of another new book: Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, by Victor Sebestyen. Making effective use of archives opened since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Sebestyen describes the day in late October 1989 when the head of State Planning in the German Democratic Republic, Gerhard Schürer, presented the party leadership with the unvarnished economic news. "Nearly 60 per cent of East Germany's entire economic base could be written off as scrap, and productivity in mines and factories was nearly 50 per cent behind the West." Even more appalling was the 12-fold increase in the GDR's national debt—a situation so grotesque that it had been classified as a state secret lest loans from Western creditors dry up. "Just to avoid further indebtedness," wrote Schürer, "would mean a lowering next year of living standards by 25 to 30 per cent, and make the GDR ungovernable." So the wall came down just before the hermetic state that it enclosed would have imploded. I doubt that there would have been much "nostalgia" for that.
I can't read that description of the decline and fall of the GDR without recalling that more and more of us "Wessies" these days are witnessing our national economic bases being written off as scrap, our national debts spiralling out of control, our employment and pension prospects bleakening and our living standards plummeting. And unlike those lucky East Germans, there's no wall for us to knock down and nobody to bail us out.
The lamps are going out all over Europe, not to mention America; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
At Least Christopher got it mostly right last week about Afghanistan. The place is a banana republic—or rather, an opium franchise, Karzai is a Chaucerian fraud, the UN from Wan Ki-Loon downwards are shameful (Hitch's favorite adjective) in their complicity, and only Peter Galbraith came out of the Brechtian farce of an election with his honour intact.
While we are bombarded by scare stories about how swine flu might turn out to be a re-run of the Black Death, so far the "pandemic" has, taken globally, been milder than ordinary conventional common or garden seasonal flu. But of course, it might mutate at any time, say the flu-meisters, so merely as a precaution, we should all roll up our sleeves and "just get your damn vaccine", as one bubblehead put it on ABCCBSMBCCNNFOX.
And while the media circus is obviously designed to panic the population into getting their shots (most swine flu vaccines are given in two injections), quite a lot of the population are in no mood to be corralled into compliance on this one. But, like with so much going on at the global level these days, the politics and the facts of swine flu are draped in a fog of lies, deception, half-truths, fearmongering and tabloid hyperbole.
Enter Teresa Forcades I Vila, a Benedictine nun at the monastery of San Benet in Montserrat, Barcelona in addition to being a medical practitioner with a string of qualifications including a degree in Medicine and a PhD in Public Health from the University of Barcelona, a degree in Internal Medicine from New York State University, and a degree in Theology from Harvard. OK, I admit it. Before the inevitable tirades of "Spanish wingnut", "conspiracy theorist" and "bride of the Black Pope" arrive, I'm just trying to tell you how classy she is.
Concerned about what's going on with regard to this nasty swine flu business, Sister Teresa has set out to explain the relevant facts, beginning with the history of the virus since 1918 and what all those letters and numbers in a flu strain name refer to. She then goes on to cover the extremely unfortunate Baxter incident last February where these pharm boys managed to contaminate 72kg of swine flu vaccine ingredients with a mix of bird and swine flu viruses that could—had an unusually diligent Czech lab technician not carried out an unauthorized test feeding the brew to some ferrets—have ended up killing literally millions of people across Europe.
Moving on, Teresa discusses the WHO's decision to declare swine flu a pandemic despite it being less virulent than regular seasonal flu, and mentions the plans a number of governments appear to be harboring to impose mandatory vaccination on their populations. For example, this spring the Massachusetts Senate passed a pandemic flu preparation bill (apparently without bothering to read it) enabling forced vaccinations and quarantine, although the House subsequently watered it down.
Relying on information reported (although for the most part vastly mostly under-reported) in the mainstream media, Teresa talks about the consequences of the WHO's pandemic declaration, discusses the pros, cons and controversies surrounding the current swine flu vaccine, and argues that we should all be campaigning for people's right not to be forced to submit to vaccination against our will and that those who voluntarily accept vaccination and suffer harm or death as a result should be entitled to adequate financial compensation, just as they would if they were poisoned by a pot noodle or fried by a faulty microwave oven.
I'm sticking this up because not because it's fascinating or educational—although it is both of those things, but because I think it's vital for people to have this information—so vital that even if you only came here to find out who Hitchens managed to insult or offend this week and you don't need this crap I still think you deserve the opportunity to be exposed to it. What you do with it is your own concern. But as Teresa herself emphasizes, whatever else you do please remain calm and don't panic.
Collision (2009) Starring Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Wilson Rated: NC-∞ (Not Suitable For Anyone)
0 out of 4 Stars
Webster's Dictionary defines "Collision" as:
KO-LISH-UN - noun 1. A crash; a disaster; a horrible accident causing much suffering; "That collision I saw today sure was agonizing to watch." 2. The act or process of collision.
So I guess we can say one good thing about this documentary "film" and concede that the title is well chosen, for it's a disaster of a B-grade movie that crashes as soon as it takes off. The "film"makers here have cut up a bunch of Hitchens-Wilson debates off of Youtube, bundled them together, added a dash of behind-the-scenes banter, and sold it off as a film. It's a credit-default swap of a movie, and about as derivative and worthless. Amateurish, shiftless, sloppy, dithering, pointless, it's like they re-edited the H-W debates into a bad MTV music video for kids with attention-deficit disorder, right down to the lame soundtrack. Gangsta rap with Pastor Douglas Wilson? I mean come on, Wilson is about as white as a human being can get. It's just so awful and out-of-place.
Many Afghans believe foreign forces providing support for insurgents in the north.
By Ahmad Kawoosh in Mazar-e-Sharif (ARR No. 343, 26-Oct-09) Persistent accounts of western forces in Afghanistan using their helicopters to ferry Taleban fighters, strongly denied by the military, is feeding mistrust of the forces that are supposed to be bringing order to the country.
One such tale came from a soldier from the 209th Shahin Corps of the Afghan National Army, fighting against the growing insurgency in Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan. Over several months, he had taken part in several pitched battles against the armed opposition.
“Just when the police and army managed to surround the Taleban in a village of Qala-e-Zaal district, we saw helicopters land with support teams,” he said. “They managed to rescue their friends from our encirclement, and even to inflict defeat on the Afghan National Army.”
This story, in one form or another, is being repeated throughout northern Afghanistan. Dozens of people claim to have seen Taleban fighters disembark from foreign helicopters in several provinces. The local talk is of the insurgency being consciously moved north, with international troops ferrying fighters in from the volatile south, to create mayhem in a new location.
Helicopters are almost exclusively the domain of foreign forces in Afghanistan – the international military controls the air space, and has a virtual monopoly on aircraft. So when Afghans see choppers, they think foreign military.
“Our fight against the Taleban is nonsense,” said the soldier from Shahin Corps. “Our foreigner ‘friends’ are friendlier to the opposition.”
For months or even years, rumours have been circulating in Afghanistan that the Taleban are being financed or even directly supported militarily by the foreign forces.
In part it stems from an inability to believe that major foreign armies cannot defeat a ragtag bunch of insurgents; in addition, Afghanistan has been a centre of foreign intrigue for so long that belief in plots comes naturally to many war-weary Afghans.
The international troops hotly deny that they are supporting the insurgents.
“This entire business with the helicopters is just a rumour,” said Brigadier General Juergen Setzer, recently appointed commander for the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, in the north. “It has no basis in reality, according to our investigations.”
The general added that ISAF-North had overall control of the air space in the northern region.
But the persistent rumours that foreign helicopters have been sighted assisting the Taleban in northern Afghanistan were given an unexpected boost in mid-October by Afghan president Hamed Karzai, who told the media that his administration was investigating similar reports that “unknown” helicopters were ferrying the insurgents from Helmand province in the south to Baghlan, Kunduz, and Samangan provinces in the north.
Captain Tim Dark, of Britain’s Task Force Helmand, was vehement in his reaction.
“The thought that British soldiers could be aiding and abetting the enemy is just rubbish,” he said. “We have had 85 casualties so far this year.”
Engineer Mohammad Omar, governor of Kunduz, refused to comment on the issue, but Enayatullah Enayat, governor of Samangan, also denied that the helicopters were moving the opposition around in Samangan.
“I am in contact with both national and foreign forces in Samangan,” he said. “I have not seen any suspicious helicopters bringing in the Taleban.”
The north has recently witnessed a spike in insurgent activity, particularly in Kunduz and Baghlan. Provinces that were relatively calm even six months ago are experiencing armed attacks, suicide bombings, even outright Taleban control over several districts.
In a district of Baghlan province, Baghlan-e-Markazi, residents witnessed a battle last month in which they insisted that two foreign helicopters had delivered the Taleban fighters who then attacked their district centre.
“I saw the helicopters with my own eyes,” said Sayed Rafiq from Baghlan-e-Markazi. “They landed near the foothills and offloaded dozens of Taleban with turbans, and wrapped in patus (a blanket-type shawl).”
According to numerous media reports, the Taleban attacked the district centre, and the district police chief along with the head of counter-narcotics and a number of soldiers were killed.
Commander Amir Gul district governor of Baghlan-e-Markazi insisted that the Taleban fighters had been delivered by helicopter.
“I do not know to which country the helicopters belonged,” he told IWPR. “But these are the same helicopters that are taking the Taleban from Helmand to Kandahar and from there to the north, especially to Baghlan.”
According to Amir Gul, the district department of the National Security Directorate had identified the choppers, but it refused to comment.
Baghlan police chief Mohammad Kabir Andarabi said that his department had reported to the central government that foreign helicopters were transporting the Taleban into Baghlan.
The Baghlan provincial governor, Mohammad Akbar Barikzai, told a news conference on October 21 that his intelligence and security services had discovered that unidentified helicopters were landing at night in some parts of the province.
“We are investigating,” he said.
Rumours have reached the point where US ambassador Karl Eikenberry felt compelled to address them last week at a ceremony honouring the more than 5,500 Afghan police and soldiers who have died during the present war.
The reports were “outrageous and baseless”, said Eikenberry, as reported by McClatchy newspapers. “We would never aid the terrorists that attacked us on September 11, that are killing our soldiers, your soldiers, and innocent Afghan civilians every day.”
Afghan political analysts have woven elaborate theories as to why the foreign forces would be helping the Taleban.
According to Rahim Rahimi, a professor at Balkh University, America and the United Kingdom are trying to keep all of Afghanistan insecure, so that people feel the need for the foreign forces.
“They will try and destabilise the north any way they can,” Rahimi said. “It is a good excuse to expand their presence in the area, to get a grip on the gas and oil in central Asia.”
Fighting Islamic extremists was one way to insert themselves into the area without provoking a fierce reaction from Russia and the Central Asian governments, he added.
Numerous websites have devoted blogs, columns and “investigative reports” to the helicopter rumours; literally everyone has heard the whispers, and many, if not most, believe them. It provides an added reason to suspect and fear the foreign forces, as well as an explanation for the rapid spread of the insurgency throughout the country.
In the end, it may not really matter whether the rumours are ever substantiated. The firm belief that Afghans have in them can determine attitudes and behaviour, further fueling mistrust of the westerners in their midst.
Ahmad Kawoosh is an IWPR journalist based in Mazar-e-Sharif.
Last year, Christopher made an appeal to his readers for books for the newly opened American University of Iraq in Sulaimaniya or AUI-S, a fledgling oasis of learning in the heart of Kurdistan. At about the same time as Hitch was begging for books, Hitchens Watch's very own Mark G, got himself hired as an instructor at the University and spent the best part of a year teaching there. Now his end-of-term report on the AUI-S is out at Counterpunch, and the tale he tells is far from flattering. While the university brochure features an enormous, very modern-looking building that does not exist", the actual classes are conducted "outside in rows of box-shaped huts (which some students call “chicken shacks”)."
On the plus side, the prime mover and shaker behind the project, Iraqi deputy Prime Minister and Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Government of Iraq Dr. Barham Salih is a good friend of Hitch's and seems to have every bit as much personal integrity as Hitch's other best Iraqi buddy, Ahmed Chalabai. Meanwhile, the first chancellor of the University, John Agresto is a former Coalition Provisional Authority man with connections to Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and who used to work with Lynne Cheney at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Hence Mark can be forgiven some cynicism:
Given these facts, it is not surprising that AUI-S functions more like a political tool, rather than as an educational enterprise. That, of course, does not stop its leaders from promoting AUI-S as a real university bent on spreading democracy. Create the appearance of a thriving western-style university in Iraq and then cite it as evidence of Iraq’s progress toward a liberal democracy. That is pretty much the idea. It looks good on paper for both pro-war cheerleaders and Iraqi politicians in power to brag about. However, almost everything about AUI-S – aside from the inept, villainous crowd who run it – is artificial.
Those who believe religion poisons everything must be anxious about the present state of goings on at Sulaimani, because with the passing on of Agresto from the scene, AUI-S's current chancellor is, if Mark's description is anything to go by, an out-of-the-cloister Bible-thumping Christian who communicates with the teaching staff via scripture, not to mention pseudo-scripture. Is this really the kind of academic institution our fearless Antitheist wants us all to support?
The important work of actually teaching students, as I learned in a most unpleasant way, takes a back seat to everything, especially to the egos of the administrators, including the current chancellor Joshua Mitchell. Mitchell is a straight-laced preppy conservative who both looks and sounds a lot like the New York Times columnist David Brooks. Mitchell makes little attempt to reach out to teachers or students. His driver pulls him up to the front door in a Mercedes every morning; he slithers into his office and is almost never heard from throughout the day. He’s completely out of touch with what’s actually happening on the ground level at AUI-S. When Mitchell does appear, he makes it a point to showcase his Christian beliefs, often quoting from the Bible during speeches, talks, and in email sermons to yours truly. For instance, he recently wrote to me, “You have shown yourself only too quick to point out the splinter in someone else’s eye but not the beam in your own.” (Matt 7:1-5) He ended a separate email lecture with a line that I could not find in the Bible, but which sounds Biblesque: “Be not a perfectionist, for the world you live in is a deeply flawed one, which seldom moves forward by force of arms or by the force of words.”
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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