In "Stand up for Denmark! Why are we not defending our ally?," Christopher Hitchens calls for a show of support for the embattled Danes at the Danish Embassy in Washington:
Please be outside the Embassy of Denmark, 3200 Whitehaven Street (off Massachusetts Avenue) between noon and 1 p.m. this Friday, Feb. 24.
Read it all.
Apparently Hitchen's rally struck a nerve. Someone (not me) posted at Craigslist for a rally outside the Danish Consulate in San Francisco at 1 California Street to support Denmark. I intend to go and I will make up leaflets listing a list of Danish products. The rally will be on Friday, February 24, between 12 noon and 1PM. Bring Danish flags and mind your manners. This is the kind of support where people can really be influenced by a quiet, calm, lawful stating of your views.
I can't be there, but I'm drinking a Carlsberg Elephant beer for the free world.
Mmmmm....fruitier than the local brew, with a clear hops flavour...the bottles are well designed...a truly smooooooth experience, with not a hint of roughness in the glass on the tongue when I drink.
Actually, the beer experience, coupled with the smoooooooth design of the bottle opens up a whole new dimesion in beer appreciation.
Seriously, Australian brewers, take a look at the Carlsberg bottle design...it's a winner.
**two thumbs up**
I bought my Danish flag today.
Thanks in advance to everyone that is going to attend this rally. Your support is very much appreciated here in Denmark, and it helps us continue to withstand the blackmail from muslim tyrants.
"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief." This is from our State Department Spokesman in response to the Muslim world's outrage over the cartoons. Orwellian, full of it, deceptive. Where is Bush's support for the Danish President? Not a word--just a short phone call. Nothing about the beauty of freedom of speech, of satire; no, nothing at all. From the boy genius we get carefull state department memos and we get Mrs. Karen Hughes, a Texas political insider, but no expert on Islam. From the boy genius we almost got Harriet Miers, but the right revolted, said, "not over our cold dead political bodies," and the boy genius caved. I've never seen a guy always cave on a political issue. Yes, Yes, I can almost here. Maybe, but the democrats are far worse. This too is getting old if its the only arguement made. I've never once heard this arguement under the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. The world is as black and white and gray now as it was then. I will grant Bush this: his standing up to the yahoo anti-Arab sentiment of the day should serve his brother Neal well as he sells his software in the region. Should serve his Father and numerous business contacts well. One day, a nice fat speech with a million dollars or two from Dubai will be in the works. However you want to call it, politics, incompetance or a witchs' brew of both is the result.
Christopher Hitchens gets more like his brother every day. Good stuff. This bit is spot on:
Speaking of "islamophobia", the ludicrous site Islamophobia Watch describes Robert Spencer as "lovely":
Islamosceptic is term to correct them with.
Christopher Hitchens has written an excellent article. I don't want to quibble, but two problems make me feel compelled to do so.
1. "Fundamentalist" versions of the Koran? Is he kidding? Even the slightly apologetic and well-respected translations (e.g., Pickthall, Yusuf Ali) still have all the bad stuff I've pasted here and which many have read in Robert's books. Here's an annotation.
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/index.htm
Tafsir (or tafseer) is necessary to understand the meaning and context of the quran.
http://www.tafsir.com/
Other tafsir are available, and should also be consulted.
And yes, verse 22:15 really does tell non-Muslims to go hang themselves if they don't want Mohammad (and his followers) to conquer the whole world (48:28).
2. Wahhabis as the singular root of all evil in Islam. We know this one's a myth. Why doesn't Hitchens seem to know? Hitchens needs to get less information from Schwartz and more information from JW/DW!
Yes, he isn't quite there yet. For example, he refers to "Islamists", as if there were a moderate, apolitical version of Islam.
He needs to do some reading, starting with the PIG guide or Al Sina's "Faithfreedom" website.
Hitchens must have a great deal to ponder these days, including finding out relatively late in life that his mother and grandmother were Jewish.
I don't always agree with him, for instance in that very article finding any "free speech" equivalence between the cartoon jihad and Austria trying and convicting David Irving of Holocaust denial and sending him off to prison, but I just have to love the guy for not suffering fools gladly, per this recent account of an appearance he made in New York City before a not particularly friendly audience:
Leave it to pro-war pundit Christopher Hitchens to rile up a crowd of New York liberals.
The catcalls started almost from the moment the prickly Brit began defending the Iraq adventure during Wednesday night's squabble at the Ethical Culture Society.
"Make zoo noises!" Hitchens taunted. "Bear in mind, if you had been listened to, Bosnia would part of greater Serbia, Afghanistan would be run by the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein would still be in charge of Iraq."
For good measure, he added: "British intelligence was quite right to say that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Niger. That you can look up."
To which a peacenik screamed: "F- you!"
"Shut up," Hitchens retorted. "You're rude and silly. And ugly."
Afterward, a deeply satisfied Hitchens smoked a cigarette. "I know how to hurt their feelings because I know what they're going through. ... I have a real relish for inflicting pain on them."
I'll join ExpatriateDK and thank everybody who are going to take part in the manifestation in front of the Danish Embassey in Washington...
One O'clock? Yuck! Why not a couple of hours later? I would've been able to go!
I raise three Carlsbergs. \~/\~/\~/ Skol!
As my danish friends before me, I would also like to show my gratitude to all those involved in a campaign for solidarity with the danish people: Thank you!
An addition to the honourable list of papers which have published the cartoons - Byelorussian weekly "Zgoda". Sadly the White Russians Muslims are taking them to court! Shame!
"An addition to the honourable list of papers which have published the cartoons - Byelorussian weekly "Zgoda". Sadly the White Russians Muslims are taking them to court! Shame!"
I dont think that is sad. That is great, especially if the judges have enough rational thought and courage left to dismiss the case. If not, then we get to see another example of bowing to terrorists being exposed.
Taking something to court is everyones right if the feel they have been subjected to something unreasonable and illegal. What matters is the outcome of that court case.
Getting a judges word that the cartoons are okay is just going to weaken the argument even more for these nutcases.
Folks, I've just been over to LGF and one of the posters just informed me that he called the Danish Consulate in San Francisco and that his impression from speaking to them was that the consulate would just as soon not draw attention to themselves for counter demonstrations or to inconvenience other people in the building. Since I expect that someone will show up, I'll still bring leaflets (What Danish stuff you should buy) and not carry any sign.
Isn't he the anti-semitic bastard who claimed to have seen a division of Israeli Soldiers luring children to them with candy and killing the children when they came?
Is he not the man who constantly screams divest Israel?
I say divest him, they are people that are not so full of hypocricy and who do not share Islam's pre-cartoon rage objectives to lead the defence of Denmark.
NicephorusPhocas:
If "he" is Christopher Hitchens, he was certainly close to Ed Said at one point, but I'm not aware of him having any claims to have witnessed such an act by the IDF and he's no anti-semetic bastard, at least not these days; he's actually spent some time looking up his Jewish family roots (maternal side) along the Polish/German border. I went to listen to him speak at a synagogue a few months ago and he's become very close friends with "neocon" and very Jewish David Frum.
waterdragon
hitchens believes--or used to--that the Jews have robbed the Palis of their land.
hoyode,
1 California Street is at the base of Market, Drumm and California. There is a large public plaza at the terminus of the California Street cable car. Building tenants need not be disturbed. I was somewhat dismayed by the comments regarding fear of the counter demonstration. Free speech cannot be intimidated, A counter demonstration is exactly what is needed to show people exactly how important defense of free speech is.
BTW, I have been trying to access LGF for two days and just get a blank page.
I was thinking of a very neutral poster myself, should one challenge the message their motives would be immediately suspect since it does not target or identify any group which is a big no-no in Baghdad by the Bay.
YOUR RELIGION DOES NOT BAR MY SPEECH
Applies equally to the oh-so-hated in SF evangelicals (I detest their extremist views too), does it not? Therefore anyone who counters my sign in favor of Muslims must then also agree that they shall also not use any speech offensive to evangelicals or the most revered historical figure in all of Christianity, Jesus Christ himself.
At the moment we are doing a piss-poor job of defending ourselves--let alone the Danes!!!
ovidius:
I am quite aware of Hitchens' opinion of Palestinian rights and claims, but they are not quite as broad as you think, at least they aren't any more. His views have definitely modified since the days when he hung out with Ed Said. He spoke very directly before a Jewish audience of Sari Nussbeih's family's connection to Jerusalem, which, apparently dates to the 12th century, which was likely his way of putting it that a lasting peace would require addressing the displacement of non-Jews with an indisputable claim.
I'd be interested in knowing what he has to say to Arab audiences. My suspision is that he'd tell them they have an equal obligation to accept the existence of a Jewish state in their midst, because he has written, within the last two years, in support of a two-state solution.
ExpatriateDK, I am afraid that to Lukaszenko primo voto Mo it is just another display of free speech, which is intolerable. I did not expect any better from Byelorussian regime, however the fact that the paper called "Agreement" dared to make thier own statement on the issue of freedom of expression without consulting it with the infallible "Mo" Lukaszenko, is a remarkable act of heroism in a coutry under a Stalinist rule. Bravo "Zgoda"! Long live free Byelorussia!
Sadly mufti Lukaszenko and his Ministry of Information (read = spying on citizens) will aim at closing the independent weekly "Zgoda" and they are more than sure to win their case in court (that is a parody of an independent justice):
http://serwisy.gazeta.pl/swiat/1,34192,3180636.html
Christopher Hitchens thinks of himself as a Fearless Truthteller, the Man Who In Supporting the War in Iraq (for all the wrong reasons) Dared to Speak Truth to Power (power in this case being defined as Victor Navasky and Katrina vanden Heuvel or, more exactly, Victor Navasky and Katrina vanden Heuvel's cheekbones). Il fait son petit Orwell in comical fashion.
He still does not comprehend the essence of Islam, the division of the universe between Believer and Infidel, the suppression of so much art and music, the refusal to countenance free and skeptical inquiry. He still appears to believe that some time in the dim past wonderful things happened under Islam, possibly because of Islam. He isn't nearly far enough along in his comprehension.
And because he does not start with that knowledge of the full malevolence and menace of Islam, his comprehension of the day's events is limited. He has the right instincts, and for some that may be enough. But he's a sentimentalist, the kind of sentimentalist who is immediately attracted by the word "islamofascism" because it preserves his Abraham-Lincoln-Brigade bona fides, his Left Book Club gollanczian heritage, and for some reason he thinks that is important.
He could make more sense of things, and be more useful, if he retired for a month or two to read more widely and deeply in the texts of Islam, and of Western scholars of Islam. He could start with Spencer, Bat Ye'or, Bostom's "The Legacy of Jihad": The texts of Islam (Qur'an, Hadith, Sira) and then the Western scholarship on the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims.
Without such study, what happens in Nigeria, or Sudan, or Indonesia, or in Iraq about which he has been such an enthusiast, will never quite make sense. And he will continue to believe that further Israeli concessions will bring peace when they will only bring, and must bring, given the psychology of Muslims, the Israelis and the Arabs (let's skip this "Palestinian" nonsense, shall we?) closer to open warfare.
Some may reconcile themselves to enduring his overheated prose because he is, more or less, on the right side. He doesn't like Edward Said, he doesn't like George Galloway. But he never quite gets things right, no laser-like beam that penetrates right through. How impressed should we be, after all, that he sees through the likes of George Galloway and Edward Said? A lot? A little? Not at all? He's in favor of Denmark, and against those who wish to bully Denmark. That's nice, but it's not nearly enough.
Particularly amazing is his continued inability to see the relevance -- no, not the relevance, the centrality -- of Islam to understanding what is demurely called the "Arab-Israeli dispute." Without Islam, it cannot be understood. And HItchens has so far managed to refrain from making the connection between the Arab refusal to countenance Israel after May 15, 1948, whatever its size, or the "Zionist undertaking" during the Mandatory period. He appears not to know much about what happened before 1967. He appears to believe that there exists a "Palestinian people." He never refers to the actual demographic history of the area. The specific legal, moral, and historic claims of the Jews to Western Palestine -- at least to Western Palestine -- are never discussed by him, as if he does not know them. He has swallowed whole the disguise offered - the "two tiny peoples, etc." business that was invented after the Six-Day War to redefine, in terms suitable for Western consumption, the Arab refusal which comes from Islam, and will last as long as there is Islam, to countenance an Infidel state within Dar al-Islam.
As for his views on Iraq, he has been not quite as messianic and unrealistic about both Islam and the specifics of Iraq's sectarian and ethnic fissures as Bush, but close. He seems to like the idea of Iraq the Model, Iraq the Light Unto the Muslim Nations. He appears not to have considered the exploitation, by the Infidels, of those pre-existing sectarian and ethnic fissures. The very idea, one suspects, would appall him.
There is much more that seems to have escaped him. While he has always been free in his comments on Israel, he appears to pooh-popoh all the accounts of the ruin and desolation and emptiness that = 19th century travellers dutifully reported after their trips to the Holy Land. He appears not to know how the Jews who remained in the Middle East and North Africa -- in Yemen and Morocco, and even in Iraq (where the brief British interregnum made things better in Baghdad) -- were treated. He has an imperfect grasp of the "dhimmi" as a concept, and of all the many disabilities that define that status of permanent degradation, humiliation, and physical insecurity. One suspects, but does not know, that he would not be disturbed by knowing references to a wonderful "convivencia" in Andalucia and simliar fictions about the Ottoman Turks and their treatment of non-Muslim peoples.
Hitchens never hesitates to tell the world that Israel has a lot to answer for in its treatment of the "Palestinian people" -- that alone shows the depths of his ignorance of the situation, and his incapacity to relate the little he has learned about Islam (as in his reading of "Why I Am Not a Muslim" which now bears a brief blurb from him as from others more discerning) to the Arab opposition to Israel. He does not recognize a Jihad -- the Lesser Jihad against Israel -- when it stares him in the face.
Surely being able to see through George Galloway or Edward Said do not qualify, quite yet, as impressive acts. Or do they?
Take three or four of his pieces. Ignore the overheated, sometimes hysterical prose. Now circle the word "I" and the word "my" every time they appear.
Connect the dots. There are bound to be a lot of them.
Good comments on Hitchens, Hugh. However, my guess is that the re-awakening of some Westerners will be slower than others.
Better half-awake than sawing Islamo-nambulistic logs.
But I have to agree with Hugh, a little more reading of the source documents and modern critics and a little less bloviating- for a few months- would help his diction. And direction.
I'm glad that Hugh sees through Hitchens. OK, now Hitchens is on the right side. Almost. For the time being anyway. But he's still against Israel. And he made a recent statement quoted somewhere on JW/DW about his continuing support for the military interventions in favor of Muslims in Bosnia/Kosovo. Those interventions too were based on false history and false reporting of current events, just as is the international ganging up on Israel.
Furthermore, Hitchens uses dishonest tactics in his argumentation. For instance, consider how he insinuated that Oriana Fallaci disliked Arabs because of color prejudices. This color prejudice insinuation of his was dishonorable. Next, we have to ask if he really does have a Jewish grandmother, or did he just invent her in order to give himself more credibility when he gets back to smearing Israel?
And the Jews.
I commend Hitchens for finally making the right sounds at least... The delirium tremens about Mother Theresa was really starting to worry me -- Sure, he's still a commie, despite his contretemps with "Katrina vanden Heuvel's [high pink] cheekbones"... (or her pouty rouge yap or whatever other pinko part notwithstanding...)
By the way -- I'm a great fan of "overheated, sometimes hysterical prose." I'm especially fond of Mr. Fitzgerald's and Mr. Hitchens'. I'd like to see a "debate" after a fashion between Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Hitchens on that "Opinion Duel" site... perhaps taking pro and pooh-pooh sides in the "centrality -- of Islam to understanding what is demurely called the 'Arab-Israeli dispute.'" Or something else. Wouldn't it be fun?
I would also add that when Mr. Hitchens says "The incredible thing about the ongoing Kristallnacht against Denmark (and in some places, against the embassies and citizens of any Scandinavian or even European Union nation) is that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but increased respectability!" we see an evanescent but concise mention of the so-called "religion" which "perpetrates" this particular crime...
Although oblique, at least he's not pooh-poohing the "centrality -- of Islam" in the deplorable case of the khartoun kaper...! He comes right out and says it in only in perfectly temperate (ok slightly warmed) prose...
Surely, Mr. Fitzgerald, for that he deserves more credit? perhaps not in bushels? but maybe in little Easter baskets? filled with one or two sweets? or maybe a few more?
Well, we need the left, and the former left (leftovers?), to fight this fight. If overheated rhetoric brings more of them onto our side, more the better.