Who was he? I remember seeing a meme/little post today mentioning him and another guy and something to do with Genocide and America? I only clicked this video because he was mentioned here.
Rest in peace Christopher Hitchens.. the world absolutely needed you for a bit longer. I would have loved to hear his thoughts during these crazy times in 2020. It's difficult to truly believe that he's gone when his aura jumps to life off the screen at you.
"...a one-man, international, rolling crime wave began..." Hitch used language as if it was his invention. His words glistened. I picture him in the afterlife - despite his beliefs - opining with Plato and the rest...and still getting the bulk of the audience questions at the end of the discussion!
Take 21:48 Relax and Enjoy a genius at play 11:38 Stay Safe Stay Free 12:06 nothing changes 2023, and the governments and their friends and family are all hands on the tiller. 15:13 😂 Hitch is dead long live Hitch 16:45 😂 Freedom of choice and speech is all we have. 18:28 😂 I am a veteran of the RAF for 28yrs. Op Warden in the 80s, keeping the Kurdish people safe. On days off, the Turkish Airforce would go, and 'Protect The Kurds'. Heavy armed and come back empty of all weapons. PTSD lives in me 24 7. 24:51 Covid is our Nixon. The Lawnmowers of Death rolling along. So sad. 26:45 Peace and love etc
Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, E. Temor, Chile, Cyprus, Argentina, Greece, Iran, Turkey. So much of the chaos, strife, conflict, violence, wars, withering of democracy and death across the globe in the turbulent 70's was wrought from or the direct consequence of this evil man.
1:05:40 - Geneen -- Harold Hal "Sydney" Geneen -- was indeed the CEO of ITT (from 1959 to 1977). As it happens I read, many decades ago "The Sovereign State Of ITT", and I would recommend it to others. Edit: Amazon has the book, hardcover/used, for $5.50 (US) + shipping.
The description of Kissinger as a psuedo intellectual of the think-tank community is physical detail. This was supported by Christopher through describing Kissinger's creative works as not empathized by "Shelley." 5:07
One thing I found so strange Hitch nailed the flaws and hubris of kissenger then later caught in a similar conundrum agreeing with the catastrophic invasion of Iraq.
It gives me some solace to think that millions of people pray for Christopher Hitchens and millions curse Kissinger, especially in the far east and South America.
I am from Brasil and had family killed and tortured by the military regime. It is a good thing Kissinger is no more, has ceased to be, and is bereft of life
Damn! The audio engineer must to have been smoking crack. Even with the volume cranked all the way up I can’t hear much. Christopher Hitchens legacy ensures his immortality, tis shot of Johnnie Walker Black is on Hitch 🥃 miss him dearly.
for us deaf ppl if vol in high one can turn it down but if is low as on this clip then even on max at all systems it becomes useless, simply can not hear the damn thing
Henry Kissinger was the first person chosen by the Bush regime to head the 9/11 Commission. After certain family members of the victims of the attack found out about this they raised a big noisy stink, and demanded that Kissinger reveal his political connections to the Bush administration, Kissinger bowed out on his own. He was then replaced by Philip D. Zelikow - Executive Director/Chair, who was no less connected to the Bush administration and in fact had written a book together with Condoleezza Rice . It was under the influence of Zelikow that Bush and Cheney were treated with kid gloves. Thomas Kean & Lee H. Hamilton wrote a book sometime later where they stated that they thought that they were set up to fail. And fail the Commission did indeed. Their report was a total whitewash. The same thing can be said about the NIST investigation, which was a politically motivated finding that is a scientific fraud. Now this is something that Hitchens himself would argue with voraciously, denying that the government itself was behind the attacks. This is a problem of the mainstream press being nothing more than a system of propaganda. \\][//
+Willy Whitten "a total whitewash. The same thing can be said about the NIST investigation, which was a politically motivated finding that is a scientific fraud" - Give the scientific reasons behind your assertion, or withdraw it. You won't because you can't. www.nist.gov/topics/disaster-failure-studies/world-trade-center-disaster-study +Jazzkeyboardist "how many americans and british died in Chrissy hitchens Iraq war?" - Fewer than died in WW2. A battle to remove another murdering despot, remember? Kissinger et al are definitely slimeballs, REAL slimeballs, but you and the above are merely _tiny_ slimeballs trying to make your _tiny_ livings the same way, but _way_ more weakly. You two are just a couple of gathering flies to be flicked off the wounds to the body politic. You have nothing to offer except disease and maggots.
Hitch, if there is any way possible in the universe you'll hear this, I'm sure you'd be happy to know Kissinger has finally dead. Not that you'll ever run into him where you've risen to.
@@vs71597 I really don’t know. But would you agree that if you were God and wanted to prove your existence, could you pick a more believable atheist than Hitch?
Never can understand he said these things and then went on to support exactly the same face saving position by supporting the Iraq war. He was a walking talking contradiction or a catch22
I somewhat understood his position because he fiercely opposed totalitarianism and saw it as an opportunity to topple a brutal government-- but I think everyone was in a trance at the time of 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Definitely not an excuse because a great thinker like Hitchens should have caught himself for supporting something that seemed to be against everything he stood for in his criticisms of Kissinger. I think if he was still alive today, he would admit that he was wrong.
3 months before 9/11 Hitchens was a critic of US imperialism. Then Hitchens would start his metamorphosis from a butterfly back into a slug, as George Galloway put it.
Of those two, Galloway is the slug. I just love the hypocritical, monochrome, one dimensional world view of the anti-war left. Hitchens oppossed Saddams fascism and murderous, torturing dictatorship, and he supported his removal. For this, the left assumed he was pro-Bush, a neo con, an imperialist and so on. Of course the left does not use this logic on themselves. Kissinger. for example was AGAINST the intervention in Iraq. Does this mean that you rubentala4762 is a supporter of Kissinger and all his policies and opinions?? For God sake, listen to his arguments and critisizm of Bush and the Iraq War! His support for the Kurds and the Iraqi democratic movement. It had nothing to do with “imperialism”. You can actually be for an idea or action WITHOUT supporting or holding the same opinions as OTHER people who are for the same course of action. As I have just shown with the Kissinger example. Or you DO perhaps hold the same opinions and ideas as Kissinger just because you’re both against the Iraq War?!?
@TommyGlint I’m with you dude, but Hitchens was wrong about Iraq I think only because the cost in treasure, American/coalition and Iraqi lives, etc. was too high for what was gained (basically nothing but a weak Iraq in the origin which was the goal all along I guess). I’m with Hitchens on his support for the Kurds and democracy in Iraq but it was never a reasonable ambition sadly. You could say the same about Afghanistan to a lesser extent.
@@TommyGlintanti war left? don't make me laugh. you war mongers all sound the same, but routinely suffer from a lack of education. your biases toward US foreign policy have enslaved you. If you don't have access to books, let me know.
Putin advised strenuously against the Iraq war; that they did it anyway was a major component of his growing cynicism of America's values. That cynicism drivrs his resentment & disdain of the USA & her lapdogs, which is why he so keenly cites US/NATO precedents for his own horrific behavior. In this sense, he is the embodiment of Hitchens's justice for crimes of the Kissingeresque kind. Trump too would fit his importation of the sin of cavorting with authoritarians, though who would have predicted his path, though some that knew him well did (like David Cay Johnston).
I am so not a marxist like the late great Hitchmeister but, what an orator, i simply love his articulation & arguments - very compelling for a 'lefty' humanist & persuasive too - just as i dont agree ideologically as todays leftist are simply too extreme
Please, you goons can't define leftist without a dictionary. Your inability to dismiss propaganda and think for yourself is tragic, but understandable considering the level of miseducation that exists within the west and its slave allies.
I wouldn’t even say the people you’re talking about on the left: the regressive left who spends too much energy on inanity or issues of the far distant past which have little return on time investment in terms of justice in the here and now and thereby in the future (the near future at least); or at least tryst have a disproportionate concern with matters of much lesser import including one they haven’t even fleshed out the ethical and more often practical implications of and then obsess over them while Kissinger lives until 100 dying 2 weeks ago yet still thinks they’re fighting the good fight - fortunately these people are just a loud and intentionally amplified segment of the left, encouraged by the corporatist elite to do their bidding often unwittingly though social-ethical apathy is the default state of far too many people just wanting a nice easy middle class or upper middle class life while avoiding their greater social responsibilities and instead adopting these small, inane, counterproductive ones like excessive use of HR depts and disciplinary boards and admissions administrator non-academics who endless grow in number increasing cost to education and adding negative utility yet serving the interests of the administrators and others in power. It’s all fucked up in this neoliberal world. I’m frankly skeptical we’ll even be able to show the rate of the decline for more than small bits of time let alone reverse it.
A war to remove a genocidal dictator (Sadam massacred tens of thousands of Kurds and various religious minorities and would have exterminated them entirely if able) and an intervention in the affairs of sovereign nation experiencing a civil war which was a result of post-colonial France's blunders in Indochina on behalf of a military dictator in the name of fighting Communism are different things. To consider the Iraq War justifiable and the Vietnam War a war of aggression are compatible views. And you don't have to think War against the Ba'athist Party in Iraq to justified to support it, it's leaders or it's execution. Speaking for myself, I consider the Iraq War a worthy enough cause to go to war (if there is a cause enough to go war) but I do not believe the Bush administration went to war for that purpose or that the invasion was handled at all competently. Vietnam on the other hand, was a complete disaster from start to finish, for everyone involved.
I'm amazed you still have this much time on your hands to disparage the dead. It's so incredible, I'm not even mad, I'm just in awe that another human being gets such drawn-out pleasure from trolling. I didn't think it was possible.
Yes, trolling. That. Why do you actually take the time to write that out? What happened in your life that makes you want to shitpost? I want to know. Is it really that amusing to you? Why is baffling strangers so important to you?
Not that I expected an answer. I would have been surprised if you had. Somehow I knew you were going to call him Chrissy again, and again celebrate his mother's suicide. At least come up with some new material, change the record or it's going to get stale.
The Congress of Vienna created 99 years of peace between the great powers. An unheard of accomplishment. Hitchens was historically illiterate i suppose?
How does one square this with his support for the Iraq war? I don't think one can cherry pick foreign wars of aggression. He just wanted to sell books. Another in a long line of such overly self-promoting hucksters.
It's a question I've been pondering for some time as well. I think the comparison between Vietnam and Iraq is not simple; Saddam Hussein was a genuine dictator who actually commited genicidal acts, and Iraq was not as transparently a showdown in an imperialist conflict between superpowers. I also suspect that Hitchens would have been decidedly less eager for war had Iraq not been most Islamic given his almost vitriolic dislike of Islam.
It’s hard even for those like hitch to fully process historical, massive, sudden events in real time rather than in retrospect - especially when it likely directly impacted him/his friends and his new country. Plus, the events involved many of his existing strongly held beliefs and pre-existing bias/views likely made it easier for him to fall to the propaganda and emotion of it all. We will never know exactly why/how, but there is a clear differential between pre and post 9/11 hitch. All just criticism considered - I’d say it is a huge compliment to the large swath of his audience who are able to both appreciate pre-9/11 hitch and criticize post-9/11 hitch without entirely tossing him out and ignoring his value - or in 2019-2021 terms ‘without canceling him.’ Props to all of you for continuing to use your critical thinking.
I think Hitch was convinced that Islamo-fascism (and its growing horrors and atrocities) needed to be weakened significantly, and it could be argued that the toppling of Saddam’s regime certainly hastened that weakening, much to the benefit of our allies, though not without tremendous cost of life and resources.
Being wrong about one war doesn’t make the argument about a different set of ‘wars’ wrong, particularly when it comes to the facts underlying those cases. And of course he wanted to sell books. That hardly makes him more of a self promoting huckster than any other author. If you want to contest the case he lays out against Kissinger, then do it. Otherwise, your comment is itself one from a self promoting huckster who has nothing to bring to the case at hand other than his clear disdain for the man rather than the case.
