George has become so intoxicated by his crusade against 'all wrongs' that he has lost the plot. Listen to him now cheerleading the conspiracists for proof.
@@askfaisalmuslim "With every 72 Virginia, they also get 72 mothers-in-law" suggests different. Admittedly it is a terrible joke but it gives the lie to your attempted correction. How did you miss something so obvious? Why not remark on the notion the "virgins" was a midtranslation and actually should have read "dried white grapes/raisins"?
@@garymorgan3314 how do you know it is a mistranslation though? Hear say or did you actually read the text? Because I can confirm there is nothing mentioned about 72 grapes?
@@askfaisalmuslim I heard it from an Arabic friend. Anyway why should I take you seriously when you denied a mother-in-law joke had been there in spite of there being one very clearly enunciated? If you can get something so easy wring you are not in a position to be trusted on literarally anything.
@@farzanamughal5933 he seems annoyed by bill and his audience of seagulls. But I think the point that Al queda was truly a philosophical and fundamentalist global worldview and not a simple separatist group that can be reasoned with was at least valid
A few years prior to this debate , Hitchens was far left and was opposed to American involvement in the Middle East , what has happened that he is now so Conservative in his views .? A complete turnaround!!!
His atheism causing the disdain for the Islam in general ( obviously, it's a religion which hes against). Problem is hes supported another party thats guided by another big religion. It was and is foolish to think the USA does not act out of religious beliefs.
@@arikkatzenberg582 Wow , that’s a major amount of thinking involved to do such a complete u-turn from radical left to conservative. What information was involved to make such a major ideological shift as he did . Was it a St Paul Damascus moment ? Or more likely the realisation that the loony left he belonged to made no sense in the real world . Would love to hear more examples of ‘ thinking people ‘ changing their ideological stance having received more. ‘ information ‘ . Any Conservative ‘ thinking ‘ people become Woke lefties on learning the latest stuff about climate change , trans gender issues etc ???
@@S.Trades He never explained why he changed his mind , what new evidenced emerged ? As someone who made his living debating issues of the day ,he needed to have in depth detailed knowledge of the various subjects , yet he just changed his mind !!! Not acceptable !!!!
I'm Iranian and let me tell you this: Even though I agree with something Galloway says This guy is on everysingle State run media. He was on press Tv and I just saw him on RT(Russia owned station in English)
Here I think history has proven Hitchens wrong. Nothing lasting or worth the cost was achieved in Afghanistan. It is, or soon will be, pretty much the same as it was before the US invasion, among other things, a graveyard of empires.
Well said. I would also say that Hitchens should have known that the US today is not the US on yesterday, where we had the resolve to build democracy out of the rubble like we did in Japan and Germany.
@@eaturcurry in fairness to Bill nobody is platforming Galloway any more. He’s too left and too objectively and demonstrably correct in his positions and arguments.
It’s a shame a lot of Christopher’s arguments were timely, and thus not as useful today. Then again, he has arguments that are Timeless. He was the rarest of birds. He’s missed!
Eh. He was alright. Had some good points every now and then, which he always expressed extremely eloquently winning himself a lot of less educated supporters enthralled by his skillful oratory, but was in so many ways a hypocrite and just so smug and grandstanding on so many occasions. I mean he even defended and downplayed waterboarding as a torture method until agreeing to get waterboarded himself. So yeh, intelligent man, great public speaker, did some solid journalistic work and had some good points here and there, but massively overrated in general.
@@Martoto94 You might have had the glimmering dust speck of a point if you hadn't shot yourself in the foot with the "less educated supporters" comment, snubbing the outpouring of respect and love for him by intellectuals such as Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Ian McEwen, Richard Dawkins, and Douglas Brinkley.
@@CharlieQuartz I believe "less educated" here means not being knowledgable enough about the political and religious issues rather than possessing poor academic qualifications and on this ground his argument is hard to contest. One of Hitchen's pals Amis already disagreed with him on atheism, or on Hitchens instantiation of it. I believe he mentioned this in a talk regarding his latest book of essays. Krauss, Dawkins and Harris are not academically qualified to speak on theological matters (but I personally grant them liberty to converse on these matters) Consult any peer-reviewed journal and you won't find any reputable scholar trying to entertain their arguments and you can dispute this point by suggesting that they write for the public, but literature written for mass consumption has always had a space in these sorts of academic journals. Dawkins especially makes mistakes in his scholarship that deal serious injury to his arguments, the greatest example I can give concerns the Assyrians in his book Outgrowing God. A monumental misunderstanding of historical context places his opinions in serious jeopardy. Harris similarly fails to investigate the psychological impact of religious belief and from what I've researched, has published very little pertaining to his degree so exactly what use is his Ph.D in Neuroscience?. I have no idea of the work Rushide and McEwan have done so I won't comment, though I am familiar with them.
Ultimately Hitchens was a little short-sighted at the beginning with the "I think Bin Laden was one of a kind" comments, if he'd lived to see ISIS maybe he would've changed his opinion.
You’re looking at it in a different type of context. Hitler was one of a kind as well. Which is why he conquered Germany with a popular vote. The type of one of “don’t fuck around” kind of guy.
Bin Ladens were from Yemen (southern). Oh, and they bailed out the Saudi royal family, so that they could continue to subjugate their people and steal billions.
I am a big fan of Christopher but he was very wrong about 9/11, invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The facts contradict him after his death. RIP Christopher.
@@jamesdettmann94 Philosophical bullshit. Either way I wasn't talking about good or evil. And there most certainly is good or bad in this context. So in summary, yes change can be for the better or for the worse.
I'll still never get over the fact that Maher said he thought Milo Yiannoncolous reminded him of a young Hitchens.... some people completely lose all sense of perspective as soon as they hear a posh boy speak.
Hitchens seems to be criticizing what he perceives to be Galloway’s hypocrisy more than his actual statements. Not his best day. Galloway is presenting a more useful, cogent argument. PS Maher is the worst😂
No, saying US created Bin Laden is like blaming the govt for a spy who went rogue. It is a cliched narrative that people like to jump on and blame their own govt for things that can’t be reverted rather than blaming actual freaking terrorists.
Hitchens anti-Islam stuff is a real mark against his name. He was so blinded by his distaste for Islam that he supported the illegal Iraq war. His argument was that it’s not-Islamophobic to criticise real and pervasive toxicities of Islam - but a stance like that makes it feel more ideological. I mean fuck George Galloway but Hitchens embarrasses himself on this topic every time by losing all objectivity and turning into his brother
@@AlvinBang Would you revise your statement now in light of what happened a week ago? Hitchens seems to be pretty much correct. Maybe we should listen to what they(Radical Islamists) tell us rather than what you think they want.
He was a drunk and fool playing court jester for vanity fair crowd. A sellout ex leftist with no moral compass, only cheap jokes and cheap snide quips.
@@puddintame6310 Nah. He was leftwing to his dying days. He was wrong about the Iraq war as we all know now and that was a sore point that divided him from his contemporary leftists.
They were incorrect then as they are now. Read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's analysis of jihadist hatred for the West and 9/11 to get an accurate picture. Galloway is dangerously naive. ( his anti western rhetoric is also embarrassing and shameful.)
Trying to find the full version of this and I note a lot of the deeply personal insults between Hitchens and Galloway are left out. Galloway really got to Hitchens when he reminded everyone Hitchen used to be a Marxist many years back and attacked George for being 'right -wing'. Galloway also got in a magnificent smack-down of Hitchen's for his drinking problem and the fact he is often drunk.
Galloway as of Feb 1st 2021 is allied with the Tories in opposing Scottish independence, showing how unprincipled he is. Hitchens remained a Trotskyite and his last words show him to be one even as he died he whispered "Capitalism....Downfall" his best friend Martin Amis reported. Amis is scrupulously honest. So you couldn't be more wrong: all Scots hate Galloway and that's quite a feat! Check it out, he's shown what students of him have long known: Galloway is completely unprincipled.
@@garymorgan3314 You take the good with the bad. George will always be remembered for his total demolition of the arrogant US politicians who thought they could out-debate him. I reminded of Enoch Powel. He was weird with his bonkers stare but a very clever sharp man who was always being interviewed by a journalist stupid enough to think they could get one over on him. He made complete fools out of the lot of them. Powel allowed himself to become fixated and it ruined his career. He would despise all the mouth-breathers who worship him but they are too dumb to care. I personally think all Nationalism is dangerous. Nothing worse than a flag-shagger running around looking for someone to fight to prove how patriotic they are. However The gammons let the genie out of the bottle and it looks like it is going to cost them billions to relocate their nuclear bases. Not going to go down well when they start storing nuclear waste in the Home Counties!
They used to raid the Irish coast as well. They didn’t have a navy to see them off so many slaves were taken, many places ransacked. Arabs also began the slave trade! Mind you Western countries enslaved more from 18th century on.
@@garymorgan3314 slight exaggeration there. There were a few noted raids around the Cork coastline but wasn’t anything like the industrious slave trade practiced by various European groups after. Both were still wrong obviously.
@@sof553 That sounds fair SOF and I'm certainly no expert. You might appreciate the long overdue publication in Britain of ' Capitalism and Slavery' by Eric Williams. After a mere 80 years when Warburg spurned the chance. February 24th.
It was an Islamic attack. Read the diplomatic exchange when the US ambassador stated we were secular and not a Christian nation opposed to them. Being secular was also grounds according to the Koranfor attacking our ships said the Arab/ Islamic ambassador
Now with the perspective of current times you can see Galloway was closer to the truth and as much as I admired Hitchens view on religion he is acting as a total white imperialist here plus the discussion of the Iraq war and others as if there is justification for the atrocities committed on these countries by the west especially NATO stinks of arrogant elitism and superiority
It’s interesting that Hitchens was shown to be wrong yet people still talk about how he’s needed in some way. All of the examples he gives of us ‘helping’ countries didn’t help at all, in fact caused harm. He turned neo-con as a career choice. He knew there was way too much competition on the left and he wouldn’t stand out so he just made right-wing arguments like the nonsense about the pirates. Every country uses/or did use pretexts for violence. The west certainly does.
9/11 terrified him and turned him into a raging war criminal. Yet he can't understand the same dynamic applying to other countries. Being victimised by violence and terrorism fill you with rage and fear and makes you more predisposed to violence and terrorism.
Can't agree with HItchens on this one, I'm more along the lines of Galloway in that there is a cause and effect and it does have to do with colonialism and the wests attitude towards the middle east as a cake they can just carve up. People don't like it when another country starts to throw its weight around in another part of the world. That and Bill Maher is just not funny.
yes - ruins his own show. I find this kind of show unwatchable. talking over the guests they invite on. it is insulting to the guest and infuriating the audience.
It's called having an underdeveloped region full of folks with little to no opportunity compared to regions that, while part of the same country, are noticeably different in culture.
Galloway is a pos.he takes shots at the cuban exile comunity but doesnt condemn the castro regime or the sandanistasor hugo chavez.typical leftist hypocrite.
Perhaps you mean a Jihadist. Terror is a valid aspect of war. 'Shock and awe' was not about inducing a feeling of love and understanding, but terror. Thousands of dead civilians were an unfortunate part of this, The definition is different in many countries but the commonalities are that it involves acts intended to intimidate, coerce, or influence a civilian population or government by causing fear, harm, or death. Such acts are often committed for ideological, political, or religious purposes. We does this in the west and that is damn good, because if we didn't use this valid weapon of war we would have lost everything years ago...
Yep. I love Hitch, especially on religion, but there's no denying that living in America and being immersed in American propaganda 24/7 for so many years did skew his political thought.
I remember that neocon pro-war sentiment at the time was so prevalent that it was difficult to not get caught up in that hoopla. I was so disappointed to see Hitchens fall for it, which only served to grow my respect for Galloway at the time. It could not have been easy to go against the grain like he did but he stuck to his guns. And here we are two decades later and he's the one whose views aged well, not Hitchens.
@@cockoffgewgle4993 No disrespect intended to the innocents who died, but I still have trouble seeing "9/11" as anything other than America getting one taste on its home turf of the kind of destruction, horror, and civilian death that it cheerfully inflicts on other faraway countries on a regular basis.
@@jasonhiggins6431 Jason, so why are you so fuc##ng interested. Why do you need to comment on it. This is not a competition. If your brains do not have any ability to understand the meaning of that Marketing Education tool I used in comment then best you shut your face.
@@PlayNiceFolks We know he did. Just check the receipts. The west gladly supporter the butcher of Baghdad. That doesn't mean that they were useful in 2003. They had expired.
@@duderyandude9515 Hitchens was trying to paint a picture that Galloway somehow condoned Bin Laden. Galloway set the record straight. Hence the applause for him which annoyed Hitchens.
@@duderyandude9515 No one is right about everything but in this case he made a very good point. Hitchens tried to interpret things one way only but failed.
Galloway on bin laden. At the time Russia was invading Afghanistan. Our war with Afghanistan was against terrorists not afghans. It went and operated quite differently. We didn't have a scorched earth policy there as Russia did.
@@kenq7948 America was also allied with Russia and Imperial Britain. Not to mention that they were silent with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan until they were dragged into war. Foreign policy is messy. An ally can become your enemy at the drop of a hat. That's just how the world works
I think that's a misrepresentation of Russia's Afghan intervention. Their aim was to try and stabilise the country, after a coup by pro-Soviet military officers and attempts to modernise and secularise had run into resistance from rural Afghans and threatened a civil war. They executed the 'modernising' leader and installed someone they felt could unify the country. Granted they were then more brutal than the US subsequently was, but a matter of degree rather than essence.
I don't understand how we have got to a point where people still defend Galloway's position on this. I have my differences with Hitchens on a lot, but he was right on this.
@@sacred1827 No I probably won't. Western masochism will always be anathema to me, and isolationism unfortunately won out in the end. We're in the midst of the results.
@@sacred1827 Of course. The West withdrew from Iraq far too early, and then refused to intervene in a meaningful way in Syria, and allowed Russia to chip away at Eastern Europe and run the FSB rampantly through our streets. We did nothing to stem the Iranian Revolution and its expansion by proxy. But it's not just about military, we also started to withdraw from/grow sceptical of institutions (NATO, the Pacific partnerships, etc.). And look at the result. Russia emboldened to the point they started a fully fledged invasion. Iran emboldened and launching pogroms against Israel among other endeavours. And China gaining momentum in the region as well as Africa. Mistakes have been made but the liberal democratic world order is not a given. It needs constant defence and support worldwide and isolationism is its enemy.
@@samconranlol the typical type of pseudo alpha male armchair critic keyboard warrior you find on RU-vid. How about we focus on fixing our problems within USA before trying to play world police little man 😂😂😂
Why? It's not as if Hitchens was one thus why commend someone for using a word than a well-read person should know! Unless you think it really IS that recherche....like recherche!
@@charlieparkeris I tend not to obey peremptory requests. If you can provide a reason. Can't see one. Unless you'd like to laud "peremptory" of course!
Both men are right in a lot of ways. I definitely don't think Hitchens would argue for the abolishment of the Iraqi state overnight by decree in Washington or the firing of every military men in the country. That's a recipe for disaster.
Summarising the half century Israeli-Palestine issues to “evacuating Gaza” was his usual deliberate deceit on an issue in question. A lot of his nonsense was well spoken slight of hand and profound sounding moving of goal posts or reframing an issue provocatively.
It was not a “half century of Israel-Palestine issues.” It was an Arab campaign of genocide which principally started in 1937 when the then Grand Mufti of Jerusalem announced a bounty on the head of every Jew. Thirteen different Arab states participated in the various Arab invasions of Israel, and were supported by the Soviet Union and other communist states.
What knots? The mere mention of the fact that it was Islam that started this fight, not the US, and that the Ottoman Empire initiated the conflict on explicitly theocratic grounds was more than enough to bury all of Galloway's bleating, ten times over.
@@godisbollocksOttomans were bullying everyone in middle ages just US is doing now ....in case you're unfamiliar with human history bullying is what superpowers do..
Galloway (who is a revolting individual and a traitor to the west) is on pretty firm ground when he cites Iraq and Palestine as useful recruiting tools for political Islam. By Hitchen's logic the war on terror should still be going on as muslims should still be trying to creat the caliphate and drive out western influence. This isn't happening, so factors other than Islamic doctrine are clearly pertinent. Hitchens biggest hatred was religous doctrine and it shows here at the expense of political nuance@@godisbollocks
@@eVieww Maher is a child on Israel / Palestine And he focuses on rightwing talking points about cultural wars when voting rights, the effort to try to cancel the whole damn election are vastly more important. And when he used to speak in favor of healthcare for all he chickened out as soon as there was a chance for Sanders getting elected.
@@Hirnlego999 you're just listing left wing talking points that don't amount to much, unless you are like one of those people in that video that shows left wingers think minorities can't register (found it! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3JGmKHrWKMQ.html)
I'm a secular myself, but what i find funny was the lack of argument coming out of hitchens when galloway started to speak about the horrors of imperialism and the whole "the water they swim in" talk. Galloway rightfully and correctly brings up how imperialism in the mid east was a linchpin to the increase of extremist terrorism to which hitchens returns with the most atheistic non-human way ever of "The terrorist believe infidels and women are slaves" in his reply to galloway, on why the increase in terrorism is indeed a thing that succumbed through land theft and destruction by imperial powers. Hitchens just casually reverted back to atheistic talking points, the man really tried to criticize religion by lumping in everyone of the faith.
Hitchins is compelling and provacative on many issues. Hes glib but Galloway is in much better in command of the material facts and historical trends. Hitchins generalizes his righteous opposition to religious zealotry to much more complex geopolitical and political economy issues and badly obscures understanding. He clouds rather than clatifies. He looks very bad here in retrospect. His rhetorical excellence masks his inadequate analysis, but a more granular assessment reveals his flaws.
Hitchens point is fundamentalism of islam has nothing to do with "imperial powers" giving them water to swim in. The muslim world was once a beacon of civilization and scientific understanding until early sharia law and religious fundamentalism began to take over and they devolved into a backwards fundamentalist society they are now. This happened well before the US even existed. Unless you address the religion youll always have the terrorist organizations commiting acts on foreign soil around the globe because to the majority of muslims they are holy men doing allahs work killing infidels. They put them selves back in the dark ages with their religion and everyone wants to make excuses for them rather then admit religion is the problem.
@@doc-holliday- The MUSLIM world was a beacon of civilization and scientific understanding until early sharia law..." Ok bud. So there was a Muslim World without sharia? And the Muslim were so great until their religion go in the way?! The Muslim world was at the forefront when they were at their most religious. Medievl Baghdad was the most impress city in the pre-modern world at the same time Muslim orthodoxy was being cemented. Baghdad had a Caliph, who was a direct decendant of Muhammad, they had an army filled with men who believed they were carrying on the Jihad etc.
@@blackphillip564 What a load of horseshit bud lol. They are at their most religious right now. That's why they lived in the darkages for centuries. Were they religious before? Obviously I wasn't saying they weren't. But the backwards religious fundamental anti science anti intellectual sharia law we know today wasn't introduced until most of the muslim kingdoms were conquered by the ottomans. Much bigger religious fanatics who went on to codify sharia law. That was the end of most of the muslims being at the forefront of scientific advancement and understanding. Now all you have to do is read sharia law to understand how it is completely antithetical to science/logic/intellectualism just like almost every other religion. The only difference is the middle east is completely filled with religious fanatics who still believe in virtually every word of it while most of the rest of the world has managed to push their religions into much smaller roles. It's hilarious how anyone can even question the idea that religious fundamentalism isn't completely responsible for the pathetic state of the middle east. It has a virtual stranglehold over almost every muslim country. Even in the west religion is a constant impediment to science and reason and it has much less sway. When the muslim world gets tired of their religion run governments only then will they be able to find a place back with the rest of modern society. Until then they will continue to be backwards extremist breeding grounds blaming everyone else for their problems.
i mean that's wonderful and all, but, hitchens didn't say ''the increase of terrorism is because they all believe every woman is a slave.''. Nice try, but i have ears.
