So you support and consider “oppressed” the likes of Bernie Madoff, Rob Blagoyovitch and intermittently Lindsy Lohan then?

You really are clueless, aren’t you(though, I guess it could be disingenuous rhetoric).

The US has about 5% of the worlds population, but our jails hold 20% of all prisoners on the planet. IIRC, A black man born in the US has a 50% chance of finding himself in the criminal justice system sometime during his life..

Really off topic: some stats–
Incarceration rates by race in the US:
Whites: 409 per 100,000
Latinos: 1,038 per 100,000
Blacks: 2,468 per 100,000

males 25 to 29 years old incarceration rates:
For White males ages 25-29: 1,685 per 100,000.
For Latino males ages 25-29: 3,912 per 100,000.
For Black males ages 25-29: 11,695 per 100,000.
(That’s 11.7% of Black men in their late 20s.)

–prisonsucks.com
–en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
–nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html?pagewanted=all

And, the disgusting reality that the US has become a police state, especially if your skin ain’t white, bears truth.

So yes, my friend, I support the oppressed that are the result of the prison industrial complex.

Re your posting of Palestinian attacks: I didn’t think that these posts should become a pissing match of who has the larger body count…. which I am sure you would, readily admit, who has killed more.

Mike is a case in point.

ADDENDUM: I support oppressed peoples, everywhere. Be they in the prisons of the USA, or the jungles of SE Asia.

So you support and consider “oppressed” the likes of Bernie Madoff, Rob Blagoyovitch and intermittently Lindsy Lohan then?

Along with serial killers, rapists and armed robbers? People are in prison in the US because they have committed crimes.

You keep showing us with every comment you haven’t got a clue.

I find it curious how you dismiss the Israeli facilitation of the massacre of civilians in Lebanon in the 80s. And, your reactionary response is telling.

Why do you raise one incident in a long, complex conflict that’s totally off-topic and irrelevant – I find that telling as is your ignoring everything I posted in response

He could teach critical thinking by good example. And he could teach how to be stubborn, proud, and never admit when you are wrong by bad example. He tarnished his considerable intellectual legacy by remaining mule headed about US foreign policy in the middle east long after it was known as a complete and utter FUBAR. It amazes me how often brilliant people are incapable of simply admitting when they are wrong.

Christopher Hitchens was one of the most ardent cheerleaders for US butchery in Iraq, and a leading proponent of Islamophobia. He made a career out of smearing, ridiculing, and generally stomping all over anyone who dared criticize US foreign policy over the course of the past decade. I’m sure as hell not missing the bastard.

I see where Zach Weiner is mourning over at SMBC as well. Zach may be totally with it about science and religion, but he shows us once again that he has all the political savvy of Little Orphan Annie. Zach needs to stick to science and dick jokes.

Good riddance, Hitchens.
Spit.

IMO, some of his opinions were anti-Semitic, and some of his opinions were Islamophobic.

OTOH not all criticism of the actions of the Israeli state are motivated by anti-Semitism, and not all criticism of the Palestinians are motivated by Islamophobia.

The best summation of Hitch: “even when he was wrong, he was brilliant.”

In fact, we can all tell from your off-topic Judaeophobic attempted thread hijack here that you are a despicable troll with an ignorant and totally one-sided anti-Semitic view of the world. Your own words and the irrelevant off-topic junk that you have raised in a column mourning the loss of a genuinely memorable and great person reveal you for what you are.

Wow! A poster accuses Hitch of being an anti-semite, and me of ignorance of Israel, and that is where you go when I respond that I do know *something* about Israel and that he wasn’t as depicted??? OK.

I find it curious how you dismiss the Israeli facilitation of the massacre of civilians in Lebanon in the 80s.

And, your reactionary response is telling.

In fact, we can all tell from your off-topic Judaeophobic attempted thread hijack here that you are a despicable troll with an ignorant and totally one-sided anti-Semitic view of the world. Your own words and the irrelevant off-topic junk that you have raised in a column mourning the loss of a genuinely memorable and great person reveal you for what you are.

Wow! A poster accuses Hitch of being and anti-semite, and me of ignorance of Israel, and that is where you go when I respond that I do something about Israel and that he wasn’t as depicted??? OK.

I find it curious how you dismiss the Israeli facilitation of the massacre of civilians in Lebanon in the 80s.

And, your reactionary response is telling.

That’s true. I’ve excluded myself from some forums altogether, because I was spending all my time arguing with kneejerk “Anti-Zionists”. Particularly in cases where it becomes evident that it’s a lost cause; for instance I’ve had discussions where the “pro-Palestinian” debater seemed quite civil and intellectually honest at first, but as time went on the facade slowly came down, and immediately before storming out, said person would say something about how the “Nazis should have finished the job” or some such heinous thing. Of course, that’s not to say that legit criticisms of Israeli policy anti-Semitic, but at the same time, anti-Semitism is quite palpably alive and well on the intertubes, and it feels a kind of hopeless and pointless to argue with bigots.
At the same time, I feel a bit guilty for not “stepping up” as much as I could. It all depends: some people are simply misinformed, while others willfully misinform themselves.
In a way, that’s pretty familiar territory for us Bad Astronomoteers regarding antiscience. Some people see the evidence and realize they’ve been misled, while others just dig their heels in deeper.

@40. Joseph G :

@36 MTU: Bra-freaking-vo. I admire a person who reads up on their history.Anyone who has a brief and glib view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is obviously not paying attention. Also kudos for calling out the threadjacker. I admit I fell right into the trap. I feel like I need to be punished. I mean I walked right freaking into it.

Thanks & no worries – or punishment needed methinks.

I guess I walked into the troll’s trap in a way too by responding to it – but then I wasn’t going to let that rot stand either. Sadly, there’s a lot of simplistic & ignorant .. humbug (in the Penn & Teller sense of the word) .. that does seem to go unchallenged about Israel and the Palestinian conflict these days and the political “narrative” / weltzsung (spelling?) / zeitgiest (if that’s the right word) can often get really ugly with some very nasty undertones sometimes (esp. online) discussing that & related issues.

Very well put. Show me a perfectly consistent person and I’ll show you one that doesn’t exist. I think he’d agree with everything you just said. I’m pretty sure that one of the many things he loathed about religion was the (literal) hero worship that often comes with it.
Again, I apologize for going off-topic there.

Like I said, I walked into it. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but you may well be right. As someone from a Jewish background (who hails from the sort of leftist activist town that is quite fun to live in but also has quite a few people who simply put “White colonialism” markers on Israel and “poor oppressed indigenous people being slaughtered” tags on any non-Jewish folks from the mideast) I have to be very aware of under or over-reacting

If I might just dip my toe into the teacup that Solius and ORDave are in; I think you both bring up valid points.

I think that whilst Old Rockin’ Dave (#23) made a good & valid point, Solius (#19 & 31) was simply trolling and did not raise anything valid.

That being said, he [Christiopher Hitchens - ed.] did have an unfortunate tendency to use inflammatory language. For instance, in OMD’s link, there’s reference to a Hitchens piece invoking the image of the “Shabbos Goy”. This is textbook dog-whistle politics, because while those not terribly familiar with Jews will simply find it to be a bit of a cultural metaphor, those of us familiar with anti-Semitism see it in a very different historical context. That’s not to say that he’s actually an anti-Semite, not at all. But the language he uses evokes a lot of imagery that has been used by anti-Semites in the past: the Jew as shadowy puppet-master or wealthy (yet stingy) employer. The very custom of the “Shabbos Goy” (and indeed, the phrase itself, as opposed to, say, “Sabbath assistant,” is brought up much more often in conversation by anti-Semites making similar comparisons then it is in actual, every-day conversation, even by extremely orthodox Jews. It’s not a phrase that is inherently negative, but it has negative connotations provided by history.

^ This. Seconded by me. Given the history of anti-Semitism – and, sadly, its recent re-appearence in the thinly veiled disguise of supposed “anti-Zionist” Israel hating – I think we need to be very careful how we use langauge and sensitive to how such past “dog-whistles” to pogroms have worked. Anyone who knows anything much at all about Jewish history – which #31 Solius
is clearly entirely ignorant of – will understand why anti-Semitic lines are and need to be taken seriously.

I think he [Hitchens-ed.] quite enjoyed being known as controversial, and he was quite good at earning that reputation.</i.

Yep. I have absolutely no doubt about that and agree 100 percent there.

@30. Lonely Flower :“His support to Iraq’s invasion is unforgivable!”

But.. Hitchens NEVER supported Iraq’s 1991 invasion of Kuwait far as I know!

Oh, you mean the war that late and unlamented Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein caused by monstrously bluffing that he had WMD’s when he didn’t and refusing to flee into exile when he was given that option?

Well its true that the 2003 Iraq war in hindsight has ended up badly for everyone – but I think its a lot more complicated than many on the political Left over-simplistrically think. Hitch made some valid points and a good case on that issue as on many more. Saddam was a murderous dangerous tyrant and we shouldn’t apologuise for liberating his country from him. The Iraqi people and Saddam Hussein must get at least half the blame for what happened there.

Unforgiveable? I don’t think so.

@27. A. :

Hitchens was a war mongerer and Islamophobe who called Dixie chicks “f*cking fat sluts” because they opposed the war in Iraq. He had some admirable traits, but the truth is, he was not an admirable man. The wave of praise that has been released after his death coupled with silence about his less-praiseworthy opinions is saddening.

Kicking a man when he’s dead is something I find pretty saddening and what I think you are doing there.

I totally disagree with the “war-monger” bit – see above for why – and as for “Islamophobic” I’ll let the man’s own words answer that :

“This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be “phobic”. A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.”

- Christopher Hitchens (Slate 8/23/10)

Thankyou, Don Quijote (#124. 16 December 2011 at 4:56 am) on the Vile Islam Pharyngula blog thread for that.

I agree with Hitchens quote there. A phobia is defined as an irrational fear. When one group of extremists eg. Jihadist Muslims really *are* out to get you (to get us all actually) then it isn’t a phobia any more than it is a “phobia” to fear a rabid dog.